Community Warfare - Phase 2

[Falconeer]

Community Warfare - Phase 2

Community Warfare - Phase 2

Sept 10, 2014

Hey folks,

I'm here to give you the opening high level details of Community Warfare - Phase 2. This is where you will be able to partake in the overarching story/progression of MWO's Inner Sphere/Clan conflict.
What I've included below are cut and paste segments from the master design document for Community Warfare. The stuff not included is the technical details used to inform the engineers and artists what is required for each heading. The purpose of this is to give you an outline of what to expect for Community Warfare - Phase 2.

I know you will have a ton of questions regarding more detail for each category and here is what I am planning to do to address this.
Every 2 weeks, I will be updating the progress of these features and answering the most asked questions. I can guarantee you this, I will not be able to answer every single question, but I hope to cover the biggest questions at a minimum. This means that the first update and FAQ responses will be on Wed. Sept 24,2014. I will ask Niko and the rest of the CSR team to compile a list of questions and I'll answer everything I can.

You can post your questions here: Questions on Phase 2 - Part 1
Please keep your questions on topic and concise. I will not have the time to engage in debate but I will address your questions as openly as I can. Do not misconstrue this as not taking feedback, your questions alone indicate what you'd like to see or know more about, I just won't have the time to have a lot of back and forth dialog as I am working directly with the team as they build CW. I just want to be able to open the doors a little wider so you can see the progress of this major milestone of MWO's development unfold.

That being said, here's the first release of information:



OPT-IN TO COMMUNITY WARFARE

When a player clicks the Faction tab, they are opting into Community Warfare gameplay. This means they will be accepting the fact that teams will be split into IS vs Clan ‘Mechs and cannot mix the two technologies.



INTERACTIVE INNER-SPHERE MAP

The Inner-Sphere Map displays the status of the Inner Sphere in terms of borders and conflicts. It shows all planets that we have data for.



INTERACTIVITY

Players can pan the map.
Players can zoom in/out on the map.
Players can click a planet.



PLANET DETAILS

When a planet is clicked, an information panel should show the planet’s detailed information:
Planet Name
Planet Faction Affiliation
Occupying Unit (If applicable)
Any lore from BT we can add (Population, temperature, lore facts)
Indicate if the planet is contested or not (see below)



CONTESTED PLANETS

When a planet is contested, the warring factions are fighting over who will control the planet and reap the associated rewards. For each planet, there is an attacking Faction Unit and a defending Faction Unit.
Contested planets are specially marked on the IS map and can be identified at all zoom levels.
Contested planets are assignable by the design team.



ENGAGING IN PLANETARY CONQUEST

During peak player count times throughout the day, planetary control matches will be kicked off within the Faction tab. Players will see planets on the Inner Sphere map which are currently contested and be able to choose to be part of the fight.



A PLAYER’S FACTION SELECTION

The faction a player has aligned to will be a hard rule as to which ‘Mechs they can use and which planets they can attack/defend.



GROUPS IN COMMUNITY WARFARE

Groups in community warfare will be hard limited to players in the same unit. This is to re-enforce faction gameplay so you will not see groups of mixed Kurita and Davion for example.



INITIATING AN ATTACK

Initial plan is to have initiation of an attack can only be done by a 12-man unit group. The group leader will select a planet and click the attack button.



PRIORITIZATION OF GROUPS

Attacking groups are always placed in a single queue in a first-in first-out logistics order (FIFO). Defending groups are placed in queue and are given the opportunity to choose their group’s ‘Mech weight class build to meet the requirements of the defending team for the given match.



DEFENDING TEAM QUEUE

There are 2 types of defenders for a planet. Contract defenders are the Unit that won the right to defend a planet through the bidding system. Faction defenders are the rest of the players who can defend the planet but are not part of the contract defending unit.



CONTRACT DEFENDERS

When an attack is first triggered, a notification is sent to all members of the unit that is part of the contract defenders.
The contract defenders have [2] minutes to respond by creating a 12-man unit team and clicking the defend button.



FACTION DEFENDERS

If the [2] minute limit expires, the remaining slots available on the team are made publically available.
When this release to faction defenders happens, all faction players are notified via an in-game messaging system.
The remaining slots are filled by faction defenders in priority order in which they clicked the defend button.
Faction defenders when allowed to join a team are given [30] seconds to choose their ‘Mechs to fit the available slots.



DROP DECKS

A drop deck is a selection of 4 ‘Mechs in the player’s inventory. Each of the 4 ‘Mechs must be one of each weight class (one light, one medium, one heavy, one assault). All 4 ‘Mechs must belong to the same technology core (IS or Clan). The Drop Deck is a means for the player to quickly choose their favorite ‘Mech of a specific weight class when in the defender queue outlined above.
The Drop Deck will display the following:
Currently chosen Light ‘Mech thumbnail
Currently chosen Medium ‘Mech thumbnail
Currently chosen Heavy ‘Mech thumbnail
Current chosen Assault ‘Mech thumbnail
A drop down in each 'Mech panel will allow the player to change a 'Mech for an owned, same weight class 'Mech.



PLANETARY CONQUEST GAME-MODE

This new game mode and map is planned to be part of the map/game mode cycle of matches for Community Warfare.
To make taking a planet feel epic, a new game mode would bring the feeling of longer matches and standoffs. Instead of playing a series of death match games to decide who conquers a planet, this new attack/defend game mode would let players feel like they’re truly fighting over something.
Invasion incorporates an attacking drop zone (where attackers spawn) and a defensive base (defenders spawn). The idea is that the attackers destroy the defenders base and defensive structures. At a severe choke point location on the map, a set of defensive barriers prevent the attackers (those who do not have jump jets) from proceeding beyond this point. If the attackers use high ground positions and take out the power plants holding the magnetic doors shut, the doors will lose power and a safety mechanic opens the doors allowing the attackers through.



INVASION MODE - MAP REQUIREMENTS

Maps must have longer travel times to point of first contact. This is important because it also increases the time it takes for re-enforcements (respawns) to arrive back into battle.
Maps must have multiple choke points that encase the defensive barriers. Too few choke points and the defenders will have too great of an advantage focus firing on the points of passage.
Choke points must provide some means of destroying power generators on the defender’s side of the defensive barriers.
Choke points should be protected by defensive turrets.
Defensive barriers should be connected to a power plant.
Destroying power plants open the connected barriers.
Gates should open slowly allowing players to “slice the pie” and engage.
Light ‘Mechs with jump jets should be able to barely make it over the barriers if they so choose.

[Ironwood]

90 days ?

[satael]

Sounds like a horrible mess but then again they can only surprise me positively when it comes to (the actual implementation of) CW. 

[Falconeer]

Funny enough, they pretty much said exactly 90 days. Russ repeated over and over on the Town Hall Q&A that it's going to be out "by the end of the year". Which makes it what, 90? 100 days?

[Ironwood]

That shit ain't coming in 90 days if he's pasting from a design doc.

Not a chance in hell.

[eldaec]

How is this Phase2? What was phase 1?

Am I right to understand that this means CW is 12 person premade only? Because that is dumb.

As I have posted previously, I really don't understand the attraction of CW.

[eldaec]

Also, they think they are planning to waste energy developing maps that are only used in CW?

 

[eldaec]

When an attack is first triggered, a notification is sent to all members of the unit that is part of the contract defenders.
The contract defenders have [2] minutes to respond by creating a 12-man unit team and clicking the defend button

Gives an idea just how early this design doc is.

The whole idea of allowing guilds to defend locations but then not including any mechanism for managing time zones seems ridiculous. But only giving people 2 minutes to form a 12 man premade group is even more daft.

[Falconeer]

Phase 1 was creating a Unit.

*IF I GET IT RIGHT* It is not 12 person premade only as it says specifically that premades will have 2 minutes to put up a group, and after that the system will invite random players from the appropriate faction. I also believe that there will be:

Merc fights, where mercenary units will battle each other for planets in mandatory premades of 12.
Then, there are the "Lore Factions" battles, where everyone even as a single can join in as long as you queue up for it from the Faction menu, and bring a lore-appropriate 'mech. "Contract Defenders" are the 12 people Units, they pick the planets to attack and initiate the attacks. "Faction Defenders" are the single players queueing up to participate in the fights currently ongoing.


Relevant parts:

ENGAGING IN PLANETARY CONQUEST

During peak player count times throughout the day, planetary control matches will be kicked off within the Faction tab. Players will see planets on the Inner Sphere map which are currently contested and be able to choose to be part of the fight.


INITIATING AN ATTACK

Initial plan is to have initiation of an attack can only be done by a 12-man unit group. The group leader will select a planet and click the attack button.


DEFENDING TEAM QUEUE

There are 2 types of defenders for a planet. Contract defenders are the Unit that won the right to defend a planet through the bidding system. Faction defenders are the rest of the players who can defend the planet but are not part of the contract defending unit.


FACTION DEFENDERS

If the [2] minute limit expires, the remaining slots available on the team are made publically available.
When this release to faction defenders happens, all faction players are notified via an in-game messaging system.
The remaining slots are filled by faction defenders in priority order in which they clicked the defend button.
Faction defenders when allowed to join a team are given [30] seconds to choose their ‘Mechs to fit the available slots.

The attraction, as I tried to explain before, is directly tied to the Battletech lore. And of course the romantic old idea that "your team" is winning and you contributed to it. Finally, faction-based rewards.

[Falconeer]

More stuff from Paul Inouye. Everything that is white is a direct quote from him. Beige is Russ Bullock. Teal are the questions. Orange is my emphasis.

When you click the Faction tab, the only 'Mechs you'll be able to use from that point on (while participating in CW) are the 'Mechs associated with your account Faction setting. For example, you are currently set to "Merc Unit". This is an Inner Sphere setting. The only 'Mechs you can take into combat in Community Warfare are your IS 'Mechs. You will be joining your unit and other IS players in the war against the Clans.

If you leave the Faction tab on the main menu and return back to normal public play, all of your 'Mechs are available (both Clan and IS). Teams in public play are mixed technology exactly how the game is playing right now.

So yes, Community Warfare(Faction Tab) is 100% Clans vs IS. Public play (not in the Faction Tab) is mixed tech smashy 'Mech madness.. just like it is right now.

As for the timer on how fast someone can respond to the call to arms, it is both tunable, and that first 2 minutes is allocated so that the Unit who has defensive rights to the planet have priority to answer the call to battle. Remember, the battles take place during set hours throughout the day (peak player times like North America - West Coast, North America - East Coast, EU, Pacific whichever times have high player populations). If your unit has the defensive rights on a planet, it would be in your unit's best interest to be around during those peak times. If you are not around, you will be relying on your fellow faction players to defend the planet for you (who get invited after the 2 minute timer times out).

Merc Units/Lone Wolves = IS

Dagger Star = Clan

Lone wolf players are free to join into the foray, they can step into any battle to defend their home planets. In this case it would be any IS planet being attacked by the Clans.

Question: I guess we'll have to see how this goes... But if, for example, I'm with a merc unit, and not affiliated with any faction per se (house, clan, etc), what impact does that have on us? I primarily pilot clan mechs, but I still have IS mechs. Does this force me to have pilot IS mechs if someone else in our unit attacks a target?

Answer: When you joined your Unit, you should have been prompted to let you know that your faction will be realigned with the Unit creator's faction. If your Unit creator is Kurita, Liao, Steiner, Marik, Davion, FRR, Merc Unit, Lone Wolf, you will be fighting for the Inner Sphere against the Clans. If your Unit creator is Clan Wolf, Clan Smoke Jaguar, Clan Jade Falcon, Clan Ghost Bear or Dagger Star, you will be fighting for the Clans against the Inner Sphere.

Your forum badge shows that you're aligned with Clan Wolf. If your Unit group attacks a planet, it's going to be an IS controlled planet in IS territory. You will all be required to use your Clan 'Mechs in the battle.

Question: It appears that at first it will be the larger Factions/Clans/Merc groups that will be able to take on contracts - ie those groups that can field a 12 person team immediately. Are their any plans to allow the smaller groups to be able to take on contracts for attacking defending planets? Ie - a Possibility that more than 1 contracted group be dropping together. I ask this because otherwise you may find only a limited number of large groups controlling CW because of their ability to drops 12 mans and possibly even undermine the bidding ability of smaller groups.

Answer: There is a bidding system that will be going in that will scale with the size of a Unit that will allow smaller Units to bid on planets. However, the smallest Unit that can trigger an attack is 12 members. Units with smaller member counts will still be able to participate in a defensive manner but the actual triggering of an attack must be done with 12 players. More on the bidding system will be coming in the next update.

Question: Two questions, off the top of my head:

What value will non-jump capable lights have if they cannot circumvent chokepoints?
Why is the disabling the gate control a jump-sniping challenge? Why not just make the gate destructible, and make disabling the generator a quick mode to taking out the gate and turrets?

Answer: 1) Maps are designed to allow the game mode to progress even if there are NO jump jet 'Mechs on a team. The bullet point was provided to give a sense of scale as to how high the gates will be. Light JJ equipped 'Mechs may not want to jump over that gate too quickly as they are probably jumping into a lion's pit on the other side. But sneaky guys might get by.

2) Again, the gates can be opened without a JJ capable 'Mech.

Rest assured, solo, teams of 2-11 and 12-mans can all partake in CW.

Question: So as a member of a merc corps, will we be able to change our faction alignment at any time in order to use our full inventory of mechs and participate in multiple conflicts? Or once Phase 2 is released, will our groups current choice be locked in and us unable to change it in order to play with mechs of other factions

Answer: Once you enter the Faction Tab your Unit group is locked to your aligned Faction's 'Mechs. Units cannot switch Factions once in the CW area of the game.

That being said, this functionality (a cooldown of sorts) you're talking about may prevent a large Unit (ugh.. I'm gonna catch hell over saying that aren't I?) from repeatedly attacking a planet over and over again.

Question: Question: Any chance we can have larger than four Decks? Maybe one of each weight class + a couple optional "Any class" slots? That way we could quickly choose between a couple alternate mechs for our preferred weight classes. I might want to quickly be able to choose between a long range support medium mech, and a short range brawler medium mech.

Answer: In a recent meeting, we discussed the option to allow players to click some sort of button on a slot in the drop deck which would allow you to choose a 'Mech from that weight class slot from your inventory. e.g. You have a Jenner in your light slot. You could click the little button on the slot and drop down and select your Raven instead.

Question: Question(s): How will the mech restriction be handled in this phase? Will we see situations where we are forced to choose from an even more specific list of mechs based on the planet's resources and/or faction? Or are you just implementing that on Phase 3?

Answer: This is something Russ is breathing down our neck about.  :)

Our goal is to eventually support ISvsIS and ClanvsClan as well as maybe things like 3025 Tech only, or some specific lore based battle where only a small subset of 'Mechs are available. I'll inform more as we investigate this part of Faction play.

Question: Sounds like the slots will be filled with randos. Will you be able to drop with an incomplete drop deck, or will Clan players need to purchase four (really twelve!) 'mechs? Will there be weight class restrictions for some planets, ala MPBT3025, where some planets only allowed pilots to use light or medium 'mechs? Will there be any actual benefit to the units/houses/clans based on owning numbers of planets, or even certain planets? (ie increased match rewards or discounts on certain variants of mechs, or weapons, or even modules?)

Answer: Incomplete Drop Decks will not be allowed, however when Phase 2 goes live, Clans should have a full stable of trial 'Mechs available.

See my answer above for your next question.. it's something we're looking into when it comes to very restricted 'Mechs for specific battles. Community Warfare is basically straight up IS vs Clan.

This is something else we've been talking about and a reward structure will be defined in a future post. Currently the plan is to just focus on the fight between IS and Clan and have the IS map change as the war rages on. Faction rewards, as I said, are still on the drawing board at this moment but it is something we're interested in doing.

Question: What sort of incentive will units have to recruit new less skilled player and train them up? Should it better to have a small unit with high average skill level? Or a large unit with a lower average skill, but more pilots and mechs. Will either be viable ways of running a unit? Or will it be advantagious to purge low skilled members from a group up to the point where it would adversely affect your abilitiy to reliably field a 12 man team.

Answer: How you build your Units is completely in your hands. If you field recruits or just seasoned veterans, your entire Faction as a whole will benefit from just being good team players no matter who you're playing with. Mentioned earlier in one of my answers was a bidding system. This system will help you decide as a Unit how big you want to be and really focus on having active players in your Unit. Having a large Unit with a large population of non-active members might not work out for the best.

Question: What about logistics? Repair and rearm? Will you just throw infinite free mechs at a planet to take it? Will there be no supply chain or jumpship requirements to bring up replacements? Will you have any of these types of systems in?

Answer: Phase 2 will not include logistics. The amount of development for logistics is just too big in scope to get into Phase 2. This has always been something we've wanted to do. Bryan even talked about it at the Launch Event. We know the fun factor that would come with logistical Unit management but we cannot put this in right at the moment. It it scrapped and completely off the table? Not in the slightest. We just want to make sure the core of the Inner Sphere vs the Clans was in place first before scoping out features like logistics.

Question: This system begs the question - why aren't there built in tools for (solo) players to find teams? Also, why isn't there a system to find players for a 12-man, since 12-mans are difficult to construct?

Answer: This is something we've always pondered and discussed. One issue is that we do not have a server browser because players are not connected to a server until they drop into a match. This is something we do want to tackle but it will not be done until after CW Phase 2.

Question: Is it one match and the winner take/keeps the planet or can there multiple invasion maps per planet?
Can you explain how the "respawn" mechanic will work? What about solo faction players?

Answer: The plan is that combat for planets happen during specific time periods throughout a day. Over the period of 3-days, wins are tallied for each Faction (IS vs Clan). At the end of the 3-day period, the Faction with the most wins will take the planet.

That respawn thing wasn't really supposed to be there... yet..  :ph34r: . The reason is we are trying to figure out a way to do it that makes sense from both a gameplay and canon sense. One thing we've always been against is creating an infinite "respawn" mode turning MWO into a CoD type shooter.

Solo Faction players: see other responses.

Question: By kicking off planetary conquest instance throughout peak player counts, I assume you mean primetime in the different zones around the world including Oceana, and Europe?

Answer: That is exactly correct.

WE HAVE (already) ENGINEERED THE GAME MODE AND THE MAP IS BEING TUNED.

Question: Thanks for the info...sounds fun as hell. My biggest concern is when will this be released. The reason I ask:
1. Dropship style respawns...not currently possible
2. New combat mode...not currently available
3. Chokepoint/gate mechanism...doesn't currently exists
4. New maps large enough to house number 3 and matter...wow nelly
5. New matchmaker mechanisms for team composition...not currently available
Lots of new stuff here...LOTS. I don't see how you complete this in the next couple of months. So what timeframe are we looking at here?

Answer: 1) Engineers almost choked me out over this
2) Engineering of the new game mode has been done.
3) Chokepoint/gate Mechanism completed
4) Map layout for 3 is done with tuning of game space being looked at.
5) New matchmaker mechanisms are part of Phase 2 development.

Question: Would you guys consider a maximum total tonnage system for selecting a player's respawn mechs? (For example, a 265t total limit allows for 100+75+55+35t) I understand the need to prevent assault spam, but what about players that specialize in the medium-light weight classes who potentially do not own or are not as comfortable with the heavier chassis?

Answer: As I mentioned in another post above... respawn is something we are investigating still.. no guarantee it will be part of the game mode. My bad for messing up the copy/paste but it is still something being actively discussed in the office.

Question: Will an assymetry between number of attacking pilots and defending pilots have any implications? If 240 pilots are on standby to defend against 24 attacking pilots, will the process be any different than if there were 24 available on each side, (would the attackers have to destroy more mechs, win more matches, or anything like that)?

Answer: There is a queuing system that is being engineered that will be discussed in a future post.

Question: Did i read correctly that there is not IS vs IS right now? So what do Liao do? they are not on the clan border?

Answer by Russ Bullock: No we haven't said that, true it is the clan invasion. But yes this whole system will allow us to have IS vs IS battles.

Question: Thanks, Russ - Paul did nto communicate that clearly he said IS vs IS and Clan vs Clan would come later ... i assume he meant clan vs clan only? In any case i figured you had to have IS vs IS.

Answer by Russ Bullock: We'll it's true the clan invasion is the priority. Later in this case wouldn't mean very long at all and POSSIBLY at the same time. Paul and I can discuss tomorrow.

Question: Wait what now? I thought we were on record from the townhall that each IS faction had its only list of available variants?

Answer by Russ Bullock: No. Let me know if I did blow it in the town hall, but I certainly meant IS and Clans - not down to the faction level.

Question: Will you have a 4-lives based Respawn system (i.e Light-Assault Mechs) instead of infinite respawns? It would be really disheartening if the latter was accepted since it offers no tactics and exploitable camping.

Answer: What I can guarantee is there will be no infinite re-spawns. We continue to discuss internally if a very limited re-spawn ability in the new game mode would be appropriate.

Question: Any plans to allow people to select people in their unit to be the Assault mech pilot, or Light pilot instead of making everyone pick one of each? Some people are just plain better in lights and terrible in heavies and assaults. It would be nice if we could assign people to their desired role so long as it doesn't break the rule of 3. I guess what I'm saying is I want to be able to put my aces in their places. Any plans for making room for groups of other sizes than 12, or is that where faction defenders come in at? Can we get an exact list of each factions mechs so we can start preparing ahead of time?

Answer: Your drop deck doesn't prevent you from doing what you're suggesting in terms of saying who pilots what. Think of the Drop Deck as a method of quick selecting a 'Mech weight class when it's your turn to enter the lobby and knowing the available open weight class slots.

Faction defenders are where the smaller than 12 groups reside.

Don't think of the 'Mech Faction restriction being House Liao 'Mechs only or Clan Wolf only. The Faction split is strictly Inner Sphere vs Clan.

Question: So, when should we expect to see the next round of mech balance tweaks? A whole lot of mechs are still terrible underperformers, and this is will be a real issue in Community warfare if we're going to be limited to mechs available to our factions. Any chance we'll see some community-directed balance changes for some of the underperforming mechs?

Answer by Russ Bullock: Next step is a full quirk pass on all IS mechs - working hard on this now and should help greatly for under performers.


Closing words from Russ Bullock:

I am going to call it a night as well.

One last answer - people are asking when.

This Fall - which officially ends Dec 21st.

The difference this time? In the past we hoped to shift to CW when certain features we're completed.

This time we are working on this RIGHT NOW. All hands on deck.

As Paul said - an update in 2 week.

[Hoax]

They have no idea what they are doing. They have set a firm date this time. 12/21/14 they say its out on or before that date.

Right now my best guess for how their napkin says this might work...

Step1. PGI manually sets some amount of planets along the 4 invasion corridors as contested. Lets just focus in a bit. The Ghost Bears (CGB) open up the invasion by attacking 5 worlds according to canon. Four are owned by FRR and one by the Combine on PGI's map. Focusing again on the Draconis Combine (DC) world of Constance on the FRR border near the periphery.

Step2. There is a bidding window of some kind after the planet is declared as being under attack. Only units affiliated with the DC can bid (cbills? who knows!) to be the official defending unit probably a blind auction that expires at that time they inject clan package purchase mechs. The Space Dragon Weeaboos (SDW) -a DC faction unit- win the bidding process and are the official defending unit.

Step3. The SDW now need to select the time window when the planet will be open to attack. This part I'm making up because the napkin notes aren't that detailed and they haven't coded shit or tested a damn thing. They can select from preset "primetime windows". Basically PGI is preventing them from picking some obscure not convenient for anyone hours and/or picking a time close to patch downtime etc. So there will be a German window, a rest of EU window, a USW window, a USE window and an Oceania window probably at launch. SDW picks one of these 5 (this is all made up) based on their players' playtimes in theory. SDW selects US-East. This means that for 2-3 days (made up mainly, we've been told "3 days" but only vaguely) during the hours of 2000-2200 EST the planet will be open to attack.

Step4. Day 1 of the attack window 2000 EST. At this time any CGB aligned 12-man groups can initiate attack drops on the world of Constance from the Faction aka CW screen.

Sidenote: This is where shit gets even murkier. If CGB is a huge faction (they will be in the second size tier most likely fyi) can they simultaneously launch say 5 attacks if they can be bothered to coordinate this? The reason to do so is that SDW might have 1 or at max 2 12-man groups organized to defend but overloading the system means they get to face shitty pug groups that will include LNW shitters and Merc shitters and newbs of all colors. Basically back to the bad old days of pre-group queue when 12-man teams on comms just went around shitting on kids left and right.

What anti-zerg measures are there? None even hinted so far.

This is a really big problem with this system. If you limit attacks heavily things really start to suck because it means you get your attacker 12-man together and then sit and wait for the timer to hit 0 then spam drop and hope you get a slot but maybe you don't which means the whole system has a lot of potential for people not even getting to play. Unfulfilled anticipation is one of those things most games do a good job of avoiding.

OTOH, if you don't limit attacks at all then there isn't much flavor to attacking because 99% of the defenders are just random pugs not 12-mans from the "Garrison Unit" or whatever we're calling it. This also means almost every single attack will be successful because 12-man vs pug is a slaughter. I guess it will simulate the clan invasion effectively lulz.

From here it all really devolves into we have no fucking idea what's going on. Its a total mess. PGI sucks. This shit is never going to get the levels of feedback and iteration testing it needs to not be a completely disaster IF they are even programming it this time.

Remember they are releasing a clan mech grab deal and every other time in the last 2 years working on a grab deal has completely sidelined all other work at PGI.

This is the only post that really matters:
http://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/170755-community-warfare-phase-2-feedback/page__view__findpost__p__3710267

All the other times we said we were working on this were a lie. But this time we're really working on it. Buy our new grab deal! If you spend $120 and spent $240 on the other clan pack you get a special extra mech!

I seriously loathe these motherfuckers so much.


An anon of /vg/ sums it up nicely:

fantastic.

No more piecemeal UI, maps and database changes to block them.

Now they can get delayed by real feature development issues.

as if they are actually building it properly as a feature instead of fucking around with a 2D map and text descriptions

[Lantyssa]

Besides 12-man pre-mades dropping, you've got 12 Clan versus 12 Inner Sphere since they decided to even scrap the 10 vs 12 idea.  The windows won't matter because the Clans will win every single engagement.

Which may follow early lore, but it isn't going to end up being a lot of fun for the actual players.  If they even do put in respawns, I bet Clan will get as many as IS.  That's the only way I can think to possibly balance it with all the other choices they've settled on.

[Hoax]

Actually the clan chassis are down to only the 2 truly broken ones (Mad Cat and Stormcrow) and the Daishi still mounts the most guns but it is incredibly incredibly slow. If the clans as attackers are forced to actually win-win not get one extra kill win I don't know if there wouldn't be some discussion of whether to bring Masakari/Warhawks or the yet to be released but surely coming Gargoyle/Man o Wars instead even though both are much lighter.

The no Endo no FF medium and heavy (NVA and SMN) are borderline weaker than metabuilt IS equivalents. I think its close to no question atm that the 'Phract is a better mech than the Summoner and if they add in true clan XL penalties (blown off side torso = get slow get hot) I think hands down the Phract with Endo + DHS + meta weapon builds is superior to anything the clan 70-tonner can do.

However teams with 3 Mad Cat and 3 Stormcrow are still going to have quite the advantage but its nothing like what it used to be.

I just did a stock night last night of Clan vs IS drops and you could feel how much closer the power levels are except when they brought a TBR. It used to be really difficult to balance the teams since stock IS is so much more of a power-down than stock clan.

[Falconeer]

Honestly, I think those who will be more pissed will be the Clanners cause there's no way things are gonna stay the way they are. Nerfs are coming, bigger and bigger. And not because PGI is a good company, but because if a faction actually won every match, the game would be dead in a couple of weeks. Easier to nerf the hell out of a faction, don't you think? Again, I am not giving them any credit. I am just saying that they can afford to have Clans overpowered now because a) it doesn't matter since matches are mixed - and b) they have to sell those 'mechs hard. But when this planetary separatist things will hit, there's no way they can afford the ridiculous imbalance we have now. And as I said, the people who will cry the most will be the Clanners, complaining about the betrayed lore, and asking for a refund left and right because they wanted to be OP and that's what they paid for.

[Falconeer]

More from Paul.

Hey folks,

Russ and I would like to clear up the top concerns we saw in the feedback thread for Community Warfare - Phase 2.

Faction Switching - Making use of all of your 'Mech Inventory
We were looking at how the IS Map changes over time and how slow the pace would be if we controlled the release of planets to follow the actual invasion timeline. We had reservations about this for a while and with the current feedback from the community, we have started investigating the ability for units and players to switch factions at the end of a season. Seasons would last for [3] months (still to be determined), and at the end of the Season, the IS Map will reset and players will be able to change factions for participating in Community Warfare. This allows players who have plenty of 'Mechs in each faction stable to use them all in Community Warfare in stages. We think this is a fair tradeoff for both role playing aspects and player inventory aspects in relation to Community Warfare.


Inter-Faction Combat
While the primary conflict in Community Warfare is the faction war between Inner Sphere and Clan forces, we do understand the player desires to include the inter-faction conflicts between the Houses/Clans. These are the skirmishes between Davion and Kurita for example. We currently have the ability to put any planet/system on the map up for contention and can use this feature to kick of conflicts along the house borders and clan borders as well.

While our focus is Clan vs IS, there will be opportunities in Community Warfare for players to engage in inter-faction conflicts as well. Why shouldn't Liao be able to push into Davion space? We believe this will add some very interesting dynamics to Community Warfare along with the main Invasion conflict and will be adding this ability with Phase 2.


Respawns
So yesterday when I posted the information about Community Warfare - Part 2, I mentioned it was a copy and paste from the high level design doc. A few items were still being discussed so I pulled them to not put it out there quite yet. I wanted to release those other bits in the next update. But low and behold... 20 minutes after posting... Karl walked up to me and said... "You left respawn in there." After turning various shades of white/grey I saw the error. Too late.. people already commenting on it. Here's the clarification:

Originally it was planned to have 1.. ONE... respawn when the attackers breached the gate in the Invasion game mode. This gives the feeling of re-enforcements arriving because the respawn would happen in the player's respective bases. Basically players who died before the gate breach, would go into a stasis mode and observe like the current spectator mode. Once the gate was breached, everyone in stasis would respawn one time. People who had not died would have a "respawn in their pocket".

Now keep this in mind... I personally am not a fan of respawning but it just made sense for this type of game mode. Russ HATES respawns and when he saw the first design he was like "WOAH!!". So we were in talks about it. Engineering support is already done for it but everything was on hold until we made a concrete decision. Then I made the copy-paste error...

I met with the engineers involved with CW-Phase 2 and we started talking about the game mode and the idea of respawn. Wayyy back in closed Beta everyone thought Drop Ship mode would be very cool... the ability to bring in up to 4 'Mechs (1 of each Weight Class) into a match and choose non-destroyed 'Mechs to respawn back into the match with. This was a high technical risk back then and Drop Ship was put on the back burner.

In the meeting today and planning out how we will be incorporating the new game mode into Community Warfare to make a unique experience... Drop Ship came back up. Now let me tell you this... every time I mention Drop Ship, the engineering team (I'll call them Karl & Friends) would cringe back in fear with eyes that would make an anime character jealous. We all started talking.. what's best for the game?.. what would have to get done?.. everyone agreed the community would love something like Drop Ship.

I'm happy to let you know... Karl & Friends have decided bite the bullet and fully investigate the complete system requirements for Drop Ship mode. During this discussion we have found that this mode is not only cool, but it also helps with some of the match creation process that would be needed for Planetary Conquest matches. It's a scary undertaking but it's something that we are all passionate about in creating a very cool gaming experience for you the community.

Some players may have concerns about being forced into playing one of each 'Mech weight class during a Community Warfare match. Keep in mind that we've spent a lot of time creating a MechWarrior title where lights, mediums, heavies and assault all have a viable role to play on the battlefield. Bringing in your favorite 'Mech is not going to be hindered in any way and that the rest of your Drop Ship provides you with a means to support your Unit if you do happen to be destroyed in combat. Full 12-man Unit groups participating in CW might be able to ensure that they have exactly 12 'Mechs of each weight class among the 48 total. Random groups and Units that are showing up to defend will have little to no chance organizing which 'Mechs to prep and some people may end up needing to take nothing but 4 lights when they only pilot Assaults. Therefore the most balanced solution that will allow the most strategy amongst teams is to have each person bring one of each weight class into battle.

I cannot 100% guarantee Drop Ship mode at this moment, but everyone on board is going to try to make it happen. I will update you all on the final discovery in the next CW update.

[Ironwood]

Map resets. Arg.

[Falconeer]

That is terrible. I made a post on the forum about it. I can't believe it. Hate to be negative, but this is some immense bullshit.

[Hoax]

If they listen to the players and do objective based resets its ok. We need a reset if the clans make it to Tera. We need a reset if the clans get thrown out. We need a reset if any GH capital is taken. etc. Then its up to the players to not let the reset occur. A fixed seasonal reset is pretty contrary to the idea that this is HARDCORE RP mode. But so is 12v12 and tossing out faction mech availabilities.

I'm much more worried about how not fun 1/1/1/1 drop mode with no tonnage limit sounds and how I'd much rather they just get CW up and running before worrying about balancing this new gamemode.

1/1/1/1 with no tonnage just means you need to face 12 mad cats in every clan drop. Fuck that so much.

Personally I think it should only be 2 respawns aka 36 mechs per side not 48. I'm also very scared for the balance of ammo weapon systems for obvious reasons either way.

If its 4 mechs per player I like 200 tons as a tonnage limit though I'd much prefer this whole system be tabled for now. To not suck it really needs a pick up group lobby where players can organize their mech selections so that light specialists can play only lights and whatnot.

200 tons for 4 mechs really pushes people towards mediums and heavies which is HARDCORE RP so it probably won't happen but a man can dream.

PS 3 months guise. They aren't lying this time. You can tell because they've shown us screenshots of all this stuff they have "engineered"   They couldn't be lying for the third time just to SELL A GRAB DEAL while furiously scribbling on napkins and making game systems up on the fly.

[Falconeer]

More on the topic, answers by Russ Bullock.

Cimarb, on 11 September 2014 - 09:54 PM, said:
I think that all sounds great, except for the "seasonal reset"... That sounds horrible... Please, please, please do not do that. Talk about major immersion breaking! Especially just so whiny people will stop whining about not being able to run any mech at any time, because they STILL will not be able to do that even with this seasonal thing... I am all for compromise - love it - but that is just a poor way to do it.

Answer
We'll first off the length of the season is not determined yet, essentially it will be a determined length that captures the right amount of tension and excitement in watching the IS map being taken over. So I really don't think it's going to take away from immersion as you fear, but that for that thought - we will be keeping an eye on this.
Otherwise it seems just the right trade off to allow players to perhaps flip from clan to IS to not only get a chance to play their other mechs but perhaps to also try to cause a different outcome in the next season.
Also in talking with Jordan Weisman this is how they did it in the past product BT 3025 that everyone remembers so fondly (  ).


Geist Null, on 11 September 2014 - 11:42 PM, said:
oh how nice, you've decided to give the klan factions respawns as they tear across the inner sphere in their balanced mechs. so I guess if they each bring 1 of every weight class that's going to seriously boost sales for those timberwolves X12

Answer
Remember you can use trial mechs and they are all champions and pretty decent as is.


Cimarb, on 11 September 2014 - 10:46 PM, said:
I think that is a much better plan than just blindly resetting the timeline every three months.

Answer
The time stamp of 3 months was just a place holder and yes perhaps it could be an event like reaching terra as you suggest. But what if a strong faction gets there extremely fast or maybe they are paused in there tracks forever.
Bottom line is a system like season length will likely need to be adjusted based on real live data before it will find the best place.


Khobai, on 11 September 2014 - 11:56 PM, said:
It needs to reset every few months, otherwise a single faction could continually dominate CW, which is no fun for the other factions.
The question I have is what kindve rewards are going to be given for community warfare? Because the ideas that have been discussed in the past like "lower cbill costs on mechs for owning factory planets" simply dont make for very enticing rewards.
I would very much like to see unique mech and weapon unlocks for each faction. Giving each faction their own unique chassis/weapons unlocks that can only be obtained by climbing the ranks in that faction would give players a reason to change factions each season. And it would help balance out certain factions continually being dominant.

Answer
This is another huge benefit to the season method.
We can basically adjust the rules of each season. Perhaps people will want to try a season where we try a different set of rules or rewards.

[Lantyssa]

MPBT3025 didn't last long enough in any given beta state to have seasons.  Maybe it's what they intended, but as players we didn't see it.

[Falconeer]

New huge post about Community Warfare phase 2 from Paul Inouye.

Community Warfare - Phase 2 - Update Sept 24,2014


First off, to make things a little easier to communicate, I will be using the following terminology:

Force - Inner Sphere or Clan
Faction - The House controlled IS Factions (Davion, Steiner, Kurita, Marik, Liao, FRR) or Clan Factions (Clan Wolf, Clan Smoke Jaguar, Clan Jade Falcon, Clan Ghost Bear)
Unit - Player created 'guilds'... the ones you have created and invited friends to.
Group - A group of 2-12 players of the same Unit that will enter matches together.
Invasion Conflict - A match happening between Forces.
Border Conflict - A match happening between Factions.


Now some quick updates to cover some new points stemming from community feedback:

12-man Unit Group Requirement for Initiating Attacks

Taking a look at your feedback and the ability of the backend systems and Match Maker, we have decided to remove the restriction of a 12-man Unit Group to initiate attacks. This does NOT mean that we are creating matches of 6v6 or anything like that, just the requirement of a 12-man group is removed. What will happen, is if a less than 12 Unit Group attacks a planet, they will enter an attackers queue for that planet and the Match Maker will be filling the rest of the team with any other attackers attacking the same planet until a full 12 person TEAM is created. Once the 12 person team is created, the attack is initiated and a call to arms is sent to the opposing Force or Faction. More on how this all plays out below. Now remember, a 12-man team does not mean it has to be a 12-man group, it's just that a team has to consist of 12 players from the same Force/Faction wanting to attack.

Drop Ship Mode

Players will be able to prepare their own personal drop ships that house 4 BattleMechs. The limit of 1 'Mech per weight class still remains and if you do not own a 'Mech of a certain weight class, an appropriate weight class trial 'Mech will be used to fill that spot. When CW-Phase 2 is released, both IS and Clans will have trial 'Mechs that cover all weight classes.

A concern about not being able to bring 4 of a single weight class was brought up. This ties in with player preference of only piloting Light 'Mechs for example. Do not think of Drop Ship Mode being about bringing what you are most efficient in, think of it more along the lines of being able to rejoin the match to support your team in any available resources that remain at your disposal.

Drops between 'Mech destructions will be staged to a global timer. If you do not select your 'Mech and ready yourself in the drop delay time limit, you will be required to wait until the next drop occurrs. Current plan is to have drops happen every 30 seconds (tentative number for now). This means if your 'Mech is destroyed and the global timer has already been counting for 25 seconds, you will have 5 seconds to ready up. If you do not achieve this in that 5 second window, you will have to wait an additional 30 seconds before dropping back into the match. Essentially drops will be in waves.


Merc Corps/Lone Wolves/Dagger Stars

At this time for our first iteration of Phase 2, we are going to require players aligned with these Factions to align themselves with one of the primary Factions. We will watch how the first 'season' works itself out. We will make sure that a system will be in place to allow Merc Units/Lone Wolves/Dagger Stars be independant but we want to make sure the core Faction system meets requirements before adding too many more variables to the equation.

Now on to the main update:

Bidding For Planets - This feature has been removed. Making bidding fair for all size units was making the bidding system far to complex/convoluted to include.

Faction Contracts - This has been added to replace bidding. When players click a planet, they are shown planetary information along with the contract from the Force or Faction who has put the contract out. For example, a Davion player clicks a planet that is contested in Kurita space will see an attack contract. Solo players or Unit Group Leaders can choose to accept the contract and enter the attacker's queue and a call to arms is sent to the Kurita aligned players for defense.

Defending players can now accept defense contracts from the defending Force/Faction. In the example above, the call to arms would have gone out to Kurita aligned players. As the defending players accept defense contracts, they are put into the defending queue. Once there are teams available in the attacking and defending queues, a match is kicked off.

How to Conquer a Planet
There are some new advancements here to make conquering a planet easy to understand and dynamic on a daily basis. First off, planets will transition ownership every 24-hours.

Added is the new aspect of having to hold X number of wins on a planet for the duration of the day's combat phases to successfully conquer a planet.

To make this a little easier to explain, I will break down the average scenario between Clans invading an IS planet.

Scenario setup:
At 0:00 UTC (Acutal time TBD), planets are marked as contested.
For demonstration purposes, let's use "Balsta" as on of the contested planets which is just inside FRR space on the current IS Map.
Combat Phase 1 (First peak time zone) begins
Combat Phases last 2 hours (actual length TBD)

How it plays out for the attacking Force players (Clan players):
* Clan players (either solo or in Unit groups) click Balsta and see a planetary information screen appear.
* On this screen, players can see the contract issued by Clan Jade Falcon (as an example).
* Clan Jade Falcon says the reward of winning your attack match is an extra 5,000,000 CB divided amongst your team.
* An 8-man group clicks Accept Contract.
* The 8-man group is put into the Attacker's queue for planet Balsta.
* A 2-man group clicks Accept Contract.
* The 2-man group is put into the Attacker's queue for planet Balsta.
* The team builder for match making adds the 2-man group to the 8-man group for a team of 10.
* A 4-man group clicks Accept Contract
* The 4-man group is put into the Attacker's queue for planet Balsta.
* The 4-man group does not fit into the current 10-man group in the queue so they are placed on hold.
* A 2-man group clicks Accept Contract
* The 2-man group is put into the Attacker's queue for planet Balsta.
* The team builder for match making adds the 2-man group to the 10-man team for a team of 12.
* A successful 12-player attacking team has been built.
* A call to arms message to all players aligned to FRR is sent system wide. ("A unit group is attacking Balsta! Click the Faction tab to defend!")
* A 3-man group clicks Accept Contract.
* The 3-man group is put into the Attacker's queue for planet Balsta.
* The team builder for match making adds the 3-man group to the 4-man group that was on hold for a team of 7.
This cycle of creating teams and triggering attacks/calls to arms continues for 2hrs.

How it plays out for the defending Force players (IS players):
* A call to arms message is read about a Clan force attacking Balsta.
* IS players (either solo or in Unit groups) click Balsta and see a planetary information screen appear.
* On this screen, players can see the contract issued by Free Rasalhague Republic.
* The FRR says the reward of winning your defensive match is an extra 2,000,000 CB divided amongst your team.
* A 7-man group clicks Accept Contract.
* The 7-man group is put into the Defender's queue for planet Balsta.
* A 2-man group clicks Accept Contract.
* The 2-man group is put into the Defender's queue for planet Balsta.
* The team builder for match making adds the 2-man group to the 7-man group for a team of 9.
* A 4-man group clicks Accept Contract
* The 4-man group is put into the Defender's queue for planet Balsta.
* The 4-man group does not fit into the current 9-man group in the queue so they are placed on hold.
* A 2-man group clicks Accept Contract
* The 2-man group is put into the Attacker's queue for planet Balsta.
* The team builder for match making adds the 2-man group to the 9-man team for a team of 11.
* A solo FRR aligned player clicks Accept Contract
* The solo player is put into the Defender's queue for planet Balsta.
* The team builder for match making adds the solo player to the 11-man team for a team of 12.
* A successful 12-player defending team has been built.
* This 12-player defending team is now in queue to be matched against any attacking 12-player attacking team.
* This cycle of creating teams and defending continues for 2hrs.

Once the above two teams were created, they would be matched together and the game begins.

If the attacking Clan team wins the match, they will win a token (zone, point, something that is collectible and visually representable).

If the defending IS team wins the match, they will have sucessfully defended the planet from that one attack. No tokens are awarded.

Let's assume that the Clan team DID win this match. The Clan Force now owns 1/X tokens for that planet. (for now, let's say X=10)

Here's where the planet conquests rules start to apply. The Clan Force needs to get 10 tokens to successfully take the planet from the IS Forces and the FRR.

When the Clan Force (or any attacking Force/Faction for any contested planet) takes the first token, the opportunity for the IS Force to do a counter attack begins.

The next match after the token is taken, is considered a counter attack. In this case, if the Clan team wins the match, they keep their token. If the IS team wins the match, the token is taken away from the Clan Force. If the IS team wins the match, the next match to take place on the planet is another Clan attack match. This creates a push/pull mechanic for the planet's tokens.

With this scenario playing out over the 3 or 4 peak time combat phases, at the end of the last combat phase, the servers will see if the Clans have maintained at least 10 tokens at the end and if so, the planet is no longer contested and now belongs to Clan Jade Falcon and the border on the IS map reflects this. If the Clans do not have 10 tokens at the end of the last combat phase, the planet remains in control of the FRR/IS Force.

The following question arises: What if the Clans get 15 tokens? The answer is that the IS Forces will have to successfully counter attack 6 times to push the token count back down below 10 to keep the planet.

Unit Coffers

When it comes to Unit coffers and the fact that bidding was removed from Phase 2, coffer monies will be spent on logistical costs for war. Each drop will cost a Unit a set amount of C-bills. This is to pay for fuel/food/supplies and other logistical costs. We are not actually implementing the logistics at this time (maybe in Phase 3) but the cost of operations will be present in Phase 2.

The cost per drop will be scalar based on the number of members in your Unit. This is to avoid smaller units being punished while large units don't notice the cost at all. This is not unlike moving the Swedish army costs compared to the US army costs.

Numbers of Contested Planets

This is going to be a tough one to determine for day 1, but our tentative numbers are 2 planets on each side of Faction borders (so the Kurita/Davion border would have 4 planets in contention, and the Kurita/FRR border would have another 4). There will tentitively be 8 planets along the FRR/Clan invasion path as well.

This brings up the thought of participation. Our current plan is as follows:

Invasion Conflicts will allow anyone from the Inner Sphere Factions to defend. Anyone from Clan Factions can attack.

Border Conflicts will allow only people aligned with the two bordering Factions to participate with one exception. Anyone in any Force specific Faction can defend any conflicted planet, but only the specific Faction aligned players can attack for a Faction. For example, if a planet on the Kurita/Davion border, that is in Kurita space, only Davion players can attack it. Anyone from the other Factions (Steiner, Marik, Liao, FRR, Kurita) can defend the planet. You should notice that Davion cannot defend against a Davion attack. I know this adds a weird twist to the lore of the Houses which is why this particular part of the feature is still being discussed. (I'll let you know that my stance is that only the Faction players aligned with the Factions involved can participate. i.e. Steiner would never defend a Kurita planet from Davion. I'll let you know where that discusson ends up at when we make a final call.)

And yes, there should be a take away from this: IS vs IS and Clan vs Clan conflicts will be part of Phase 2.

FAQ From Last Update:

Note1: I pulled a ton of questions out of the last feedback thread. If you don't see your question, it was because it was answered in this update or it was a duplicate. If I missed something critical, feel free to re-ask your question in the next feedback thread.

Will Hero/Champion 'Mechs be allowed in CW gameplay?
Yes, these chassis will be allowed for use in CW gameplay.

You need Jump Jets to get past the gates? What about the non-jump capable 'Mechs?
No you do not need Jump Jets to get past the gates, the JJ reference from last time was just to give a sense of how high the gates are going to be. There are alternate points on the map that will allow non-JJ 'Mechs to attack the power generators that control the gates.

When will we be able to switch Factions if we want?
Current plan is to have a set season or win condition that will reset the IS Map state. We will be monitoring the IS state at all time to see what is happening. We may allow Faction changes without resetting the IS Map. We are always keeping in mind that we do not want to permanently lock players from playing the 'Mechs they've bought.

Can you use a contract system to allow Units to earn Faction given rewards?
As mentioned in the above update, the various Factions will be providing incentives to players who take the attack/defend contracts. To be included in this are Loyalty Point rewards which will be discussed in the next update.

How will the 'Mech restriction be handled in Phase 2? Will we see even more restricted 'Mech selections on certain planets/scenarios? How about weight restrictions for some planets like MPBT3025?
As mentioned, the only real 'Mech restriction in Phase 2 is Clan players play Clan 'Mechs and IS players play IS 'Mechs. Additional restrictions that align to specific battles/play modes/era specific battles etc will be considered for Phase 3 CW.

Will there be any actual benefit to the units/houses/clans based on owning a number of planets?
This is something still in talks. There's a fairly big technical risk involved with dynamic priceing of items in the Mech Lab. (Not the store) If we can find a way to work this in, it is one of the ideal ways of making control of planets have a lot more impact on the game as a whole.

What about logistics/repair/rearm?
Again, logistics is something we would like to do but it completely out of scope in terms of development time at the moment. The sheer amount of data that would need to be tracked and storing movement of units across 2400+ planets would be astronomical. We won't trash the idea but it is on hold for the moment. As for repair/rearm, this is something we've talked about bringing back but we have to be very careful on its implementation. We will continue to discuss this internally to see when and how we can bring it back into the game.

What are the peak player count times that you described?
We have been watching peak player times constantly since going live with the game. We are currently looking at 6-8PM PDT for West Coast, 3-5PM PDT for East Coast (6-8PM EDT), and 11AM-1PM PDT for UTC (6-8pm UTC). We may also include prime times for AU and Asian times as well. These numbers are all still to be determined but I just want to let you know that we're not just focusing on North American play times.

Will there ever be a chance of attack/defend modes making their way to the public matches?
Can't say never, but for the time being, this attack/defend mode will only be in CW.

What is the expected lenght of a match with Drop Ship mode in place?
Currently, there's an estimated average of 6 minutes per match. We would expect Drop Ship mode to be in the 20-30 minute time frame per match.

How are you going to address the need for more new maps so the attack/defend game mode doesn't get stale really quickly?
With the Mining Collective just going live and codename "Swamp" being beautified, we are looking into the development time invovled with Invasion Mode specific maps. Because the first Invasion Mode map is mostly terrain, it should have a fairly quick turn around. If we apply this style to other Invasion Mode maps, we should be able to turn around more maps soon after launching CW. Reuse of current art assets is key to be able to expedite map creation and this is something we look into whenever we talk about new maps in general.

Will Merc Corps be able to own their own planets within IS space?
No one really "owns" a planet except the Factions themselves. You will however be able to stake claim on a planet if it is contested and your Unit is the highest winning Unit during that planet's combat phase.

Will there be any mechanisms for IS to acquire Clan tech and vice a versa?
Not out of the gate. It has been discussed and even the community has mentioned the use of salvage to allow cross technology but at this moment we're going to hold off on that ability.

What exactly do you mean your Faction dictates the 'Mechs you can use?
This is unclear terminology at work. In the above update, I've started to use a different terminology set to help clairify this. Essentially, it means Clan players can only use Clan 'Mechs and Inner Sphere players can only use IS 'Mechs.

When will you release information on Faction given rewards?
This information will be release next CW update. October 8th.

Will units be able to "claim" a planet that is not contested?
As mentioned above, no. Only planets that have been fought over can be imprinted with your Unit's name/tag.

If the peak times end up too short, will you be willing to expand them in short increments?
Definitely. We will be monitoring how many players are participating and active in CW and will make any adjustments necissary to allow as many players as possible to participate.

Will there be some kind of 'newsfeed' streaming results of battles and other newsworthy events?
Yes, this is something that is needed for the Call to Arms feature which alerts Faction players that one of their planets is being attacked and so on. Inclusion of notable battles would be a cool feature to add to this. The feature itself will grow over time but the basics will be in place for Phase 2.

To reduce confusion between planetary conquest and conquest modes, could you just rename this Campaign?
I'm sure we can come up with better naming. I'll update everyone if anything changes.

Is there a Phase 3 that includes further features?
I don't know if we'll be calling further feature updates Phase 3 but yes, we want to grow what CW is in Phase 2 to even bigger and better things.

How many planets on a front will be available to fight over?
Current plan is to have 4 planets inside each Faction that is attackable from outside bordering Factions. For example, Kurita would have to planets exposed to attack on their Davion border and 2 more on their FRR border.

Can you maintain an LP balance for more than one Faction?
Yes you can. We had Randall Bills help us out with a matrix of who would feel a certain way about someone being killed. For example, if a Kurita player kills a Davion player, Kurita would be happy, but Davion would be angry. Marik wouldn't really feel strongly either way. Steiner would be angry as well. The matrix breaks down how all of these interactions play out and I'll provide more info on how it works in a future update.

Will LP be part of Phase 2 or something later?
LP will be part of Phase 2.
... more incoming...

Will the additional drops be based on a timer?
Yes, as described in the update above, drops will happen in waves on a global timer.


Can you temporarily opt out of CW?
There is no need to. Public game space and CW game space are separate. Want to play in CW? Click the Faction Tab. Want to play in Public matches? Click the Home Tab.


What about including Comstar TS channel info in the Faction broadcast when an attack happens?
This is a neat idea, but since the Comstar TS server is privately run by one of our community members,it might become unfair to them. Will investigate this and see what we can come up with.


Could the defending unit leader assign a priority of team members so that if an attack happens, the group could be formed with a single click as opposed to inviting people individually?
This is not in the current design but is a very cool idea. Will write it up and see if/when we can get it done.


Why are groups limited to the same unit?
CW is part of a role play experience and Unit gameplay. To keep to this design goal, it only makes sense that groups are limited to the same Unit. Teams will be built out of multiple Units if the Unit group is not a 12-man.


If we are hard limited to certian 'Mechs only, will MWO have a super easy-to-reference table of what I can take into battle?
Yes, we can provide these lists, but with the new way that Mech Selection and Drop Ship configuration will work, only valid 'Mechs will be displayed for any given scenario. But again, yes, we can provide Faction specific 'Mech lists.

Can units have a "freebie" on changing their Faction to fit this setup?
This is the plan. Just prior to Phase 2 going live, we will give everyone the opportunity to make their last Faction prior to the CW lock on Faction switches.

Can the gates be destroyed by shooting them?
Not at the moment but I've been told we can make this so very easily.

Will the IS map change depeding on which planets are captured? Will the colored border around the planet immediately reflect this to show that the territory is now controlled by a different Faction?
There may be a very slight delay in the map updating but it should be minimal. And yes, the map will change and the borders will update. Who knows, maybe you'll see Liao pull a Hail Mary and take over the IS and keep the Clans from invading.  :)

Will some planets be off limits?
Each Faction's capital planet will be off limits. Planets in the Periphery will also be off limits for now. However, Karl has shown me how to make any planet on the map contestable so you never know what may happen outside of the main Faction borders.

Can we get pics? Unfinished screen caps? iPhone pics of a screen with CW on it? Instagram of the coffee you're drinking while working on CW?
You never know what might slip out on a Dev VLOG or twitter or even on the forums. But now that you mention this, I may smack the phone out of anyone's hands walking past my desk.  :)


Will the planets being contested be dictated by lore?
Initial seeding will be done by us. Ideally we'd like to see the Clan Invasion corridor stick to lore but we are really putting the borders in the hands of the players. As each planet is taken, a new planet will be programatically selected to be the next planet up for contention.

Can a contested planet be attacked multiple times by different units simultaneously or will attacks be restricted to a single instance only at any one time?
During the combat phases in a 24-hour day, any valid Faction/Force Unit can attack the same planet. The idea is to allow all Units of any size to help change the ownership of a planet for their Faction.

You have clearly stated that the term Faction at this time refers to IS and Clan. Could you clarify what is the definition of "Unit"?
Units are the player created/registered "guilds" that were added to the game recently.

If the attackers successfully eliminate all the defenders, this presumably constitutes a victory even if not all defensive structures are destroyed or will the attackers be required to cap the base (similar to Assault) before the timer runs out?
Total annihilation of the enemy team will result in a win assuming there are no more drops available to any of their players.

Do mech restrictions (beyond clan/IS) apply to mercenaries who use their own private gear? If so why?
The main focus of CW is the Clan Invasion. Part of that is that we want the Inner Sphere to be more effective in holding the Clans at bay instead of watching the FRR evaporate very quickly. The tech restriction is meant for all players of Clans or Inner Sphere, not just subsets of them.

When will we get the benefits of the Loyalty Point bonuses we paid for over a year ago?
Day 1 of Phase 2.

What role will Premium time play here? Still working as a tagged on Bonus for earnings?
Premium Time behaves the same way it does with public matches. It gives you extra CBills and XP earnings on top of what you get through match performance.

Will there be random drop points?
Part of the drop Mechanic is travel time to get back into the fight. Random drop locations can end up with re-inforcements showing up VERY quickly depending on where the combat is currently taking place. Right now we're going to start with drops at bases and will expand on this if needed.

Will you be able to see who is attacking/defending?
We may work this into the Call to Arms feature mentioned above. "Shack of Squires is attacking your favorite planet!" Something like that.

Is there any team limit on what you take in the first spawn/wave?
Right now we're not planning on having a limit on which 'Mechs are taken in the first drop. If a team wishes to take all Assaults at the start of a match, they're going to regret it as the fight continues and they start losing their assaults and are left with lights at the end of the match.

When you say "click on a planet to attack it"... is this an instant move? Will there be a concept of jumpships/dropships with time for movement of mechs to the planet in question along established jump lanes?
Part of your question indicates logistics which I mentioned above is not going to be part of Phase 2. As for the interface requirement, it will be your group leader clicking the Attack button and from that point on you will be queued in the Attacker's queue.

What (if any) are the "win" conditions for Community Warfare? How does a unit (or units) win the game so that everything starts over?
We've been discussing many possiblities here and the engineering team is working to give us as many dynamic options as possible. Maybe a Faction takes over the entire Inner Sphere, maybe the Clans surround Terra. It's up to what happens during CW that we will determine the best route to a reset if needed.

Is there any opportunity to customize the mech in your drop deck at all before the match starts? I'm assuming the answer is 'No', but wanted to check.
You were correct, the answer is no. 'Mechs should be customized and prepped in the Mech Lab and added to your Drop Ship when ready.

Would you consider allowing TWO mechs of each weight class in the drop deck?
At this time we will not be allowing this. The idea of the Drop Ship is that you are going to make a very conscious decision as to which 'Mechs you are going into battle with.

Can you please answer if the current unit creation form is the one and only form that there will exist in MWO and there won't be a different kind for Loyalists?
If I'm understanding you right, yes, the current Unit creation method that will be used in the game for now. If you're talking about aligning with the sub-units within a Faction, that MAY appear further down the road.

Will there be other sorts of missions in terms of taking over a planet? As I understand it (as do my peers it seems) we will be fighting over static defensive type choke points.
As time goes on, we will be fleshing out anything that will be adding to the feeling of grand battles for planets. New modes, new maps etc. It's just a matter of time.

Is there a possibility of a some type of reward for piloting a mech that are popular amongst your own particular faction? For example a Kurita mechwarrior piloting a Jenner 7-F would be in line for a small reward of some sort or extra compensation?
This isn't planned at the moment but is a very cool idea. Open for discussion on it.

Any thoughts about opening up an experience of contested planets to the solo queue allowing players to pick an involved house, carry its banner and run its favored 'Mechs for the match, get a loyalty points for that house and a tiny bit for their permanently declared faction? Wouldn't have to affect the planet's control much or at all; essentially, themed public matches.
Not immediately out of the gate but this is something could eventually address.

Regarding Unit Coffers: will there be any purchasable items for Units (for instance, base/turret upgrades) included in Phase 2, or will these come in at a later point?
This is still on the drawingboard. It is something we'd very much like to see in the game but it will become an issue finding where we can fit it into the schedule. There is also the point that planets will be flipping every 24-hours. Not sure how players would feel if they upgraded a planet and lost it the next day.

It was mentioned in the earlier design docs posted to the forums that Units would be able to charge their members dues (taxes) in the form a percentage of their C-bill earnings going directly into the Unit Coffer - is that still the plan?
We have decided to make Unit Coffers an opt-in mechanic. This allows players to decide how much they're willing to pay into the Unit Coffers. The ability for the Unit Leader to see who has donated and how much is there to see if members are carrying their weight to their satisfaction. All player controlled.

What are the economic costs to the players, and to the unit (two questions here), for failing in their objective to attack or defend?
There are no direct costs other than not getting as many C-Bills and Loyalty Points for failing.

Will the outcome of a season affect players/factions in the next season?
Any unlocks, such as rewards or achievements would be kept from season to season.

Is "bounty hunting" still going to be a part of community warfare? If so will clans also be able to do this?
Unfortunately this is something we've shelved for now. I won't go on the record saying it will never show up, just that right now we need to focus on the core mechanics of CW and tune it before adding extra gems on it.

So those of us that do not play at peak times will never be involved? Or will there be periphery worlds that can be attacked/defended at slower times?
With the various peak player times throughout the 24-hour day, there 'should' be an opportunity for everyone to partake in CW.

[Hoax]

And its now without question that they just started working on CW for the first time back when they released the first set of napkin notes.

I liked the original siege timer version of CW more than this one but its whatever. At least we seem to know more than we did.

Dropship mode sounds less fun than what we play now.

[eldaec]

Explanation seems more complex that it needs to be.

If I read it right, it is a pub match with asymmetric attack/defend objectives on a new map, with a 420k bonus if attackers win and 170k if defenders win. But everyone gets 4 'lives' so the battle takes 4 times longer (3 of which will involve driving a mech in a weight class you didn't want to play). Your mech choice in battles is arbitrarily limited  because RP / lore / magic, and to punish you for not buying more clan mechs.

If your realm wins enough matches in a day some space pixels will change colour.

Am I missing anything?

At first glance the attackers bonus seems to make participation worthwhile but the defenders bonus possibly not. Unless possibly defending is much easier than attacking.

[Falconeer]

You are missing that "Community Warfare" is supposed to be about Community before being about rewards or unique game modes.

Some people (not all) do care about pixels changing colour and the social consequences in their community of those changes, in fact that's why they play online to begin with.

They said it quite enough times: if you don't care about the "Community" aspects of "Community Warfare", just keep playing the usual public "solo" matches. There's something for everybody.

[eldaec]

It's true enough PGI have never promised anything more. But I've always felt they are building a stick for "the community" to beat them here. Expectations are way too high.

Personally, if I were PGI and wanting to develop features relevant to community, I'd concentrate my limited energy on guild features, public and private tournaments, and even more modes and maps. An attack and defend map is a pretty good idea.

[Falconeer]

More stuff and updates from Paul Inouye.

Community Warfare - Phase 2 - Update Oct 8,2014

Let's see... how can we organize this a little better?

1) New Stuff/Updates
2) Changes
3) Questions


All of the next updates will follow the above. Makes it easier to organize and give you all the new, neat stuff up front.

A couple of quick notes. Most of the work for CW-Phase 2 is currently behind the curtain back-end/database stuff. There's nothing visual to show unless I show screen caps of code (and no.. I'm not going to do that). I've included an image that is work-in-progress down below showing how to open a gate without jump jets.

The other note is that the amount of information with each update will more than likely decline as most of the major information is released early and it switches from announcing new stuff to more updates on progress.


New Stuff

Ejecting
We are implementing the ability to eject from your BattleMech for Drop Ship mode. This will prevent running around on the field as a pogo stick if you don't want to be in that situation. The implementation will be as follows:
An assignable key [O by default] will trigger the eject sequence.
The player must HOLD this key down for [10] seconds in order to eject. The amount of time will be determined based on "denying the enemy a kill" mentality which would be rather poor to have happen all the time.
Upon ejecting, a large pulse of damage is sent to the 'Mech's head component and the 'Mech is destroyed.
The ejecting player is sent to the standard "death" screen and eventually to the drop ship selection screen.
Attacking players will still get assist and most damage kill stats, but the final blow stat will not be given.
The Leopard Dropship is now VTAL
The Leopard Drop Ship is now a VTAL (Vertial Take-off And Landing) ship. It will be used to drop 'Mechs off at various respawn points on the map. This specifically allows us to either swoop the Leopard into the game space to drop 'Mechs off at low altitudes, or do high altitude/near hover drops of 'Mechs into the game space. The animations involved are in our test level at the moment and is visible in debug builds. We will probably be doing some video capture next update.

New Map/Mode Update
We completed our first play test session of the new map codenamed "Frost" and game mode codenamed "Invasion". Both of which are in early iteration but the core mechanics are all working. Gates open when their power generators are destroyed. If the attackers destroy the defender's main installation building, the match ends in attacker victory.

The Drop Ship functionality of dropping a new 'Mech into a match is now ready for testing and will happen later this week.

Back End/Server Update
The gameplay logic that drives the overall Faction Warfare loop is near completion. This is the loop that involves looking at the IS Map, selecting a planet, selecting attack/defend and entering the match lobby. There are still few points to finish up but it is tracking on schedule.


Changes

Drop Ship Mode
Drop Ship mode is being changed to a minimum and maximum tonnage limit rather than a strict 1 Light/1 Medium/1 Heavy/1 Assault limit. For example, we might set the Drop Ship limitation to [140] tons minimum and [240] tons maximum. You MUST take 4 'Mechs meaning you cannot take 2 100 ton 'Mechs and leave the other two slots empty. The available tonnage is restricted to your personal Drop Ship. This means if you take under [240] tons, the remaining unused tonnage is NOT shared with the rest of your team.

Merc Units/Lone Wolves
It will still be required that Merc Units/Lone Wolves (MU/LW for the rest of this explanation) align themselves to a House. However, they can switch alignment after a specific amount of time has passed. For example, if a season is 3 months long, at the end of each month, MU/LW's can switch alignment. This alignment switch will come at a Loyalty Point (LP) cost and that cost varies depends on which House is chosen as the new House of alignment.


Invasion Gate Clarification

Players were concerned about being able to open the invasion gates without having jump jets. The image below shows how the level has been designed with side paths that give non-jump jet 'Mechs the ability to shoot over the gate.

Questions & Answers

I'm not seeing the benefit of forming a larger unit at all. Being that there are no other benefits to maintaining a unit coffer, it would seem best to just break-up our units and make lonewolf groups. We can then coordinate joining attack/ defend queues for a cheaper drop cost. Are there no longer any plans of using collected funds for planetary defenses?

Larger units will be able to direct more forces to a conflict on any given planet. Remember, the unit with the most wins on a planet will have their unit tag marked on the planet. Having smaller splinter units will mean your chance of having your primary unit tag assigned to the planet is reduced. As for the planetary defensive upgrades, this is currently on hold with more technical investigation needed. It is not guaranteed for CW Phase 2 but it something we definitely want for CW as a whole.



What about a few sweet animations/short vids before/after a planetary fight? You know, stuff like turrets aiming in the sky, shooting at dropships or hangars where pilots climb in their mechs. Just to add more style and eye candy.

This is something we'd love to do but they're expensive to create and very time consuming on the dev team. Yes we could reuse in-game assets but some of those assets would have to be re-modelled (the pilot for example) because they're very low poly or missing big chunks of geometry. While we explore PVE content in 2015, this may return as something we could do to really sell the feeling of a planetary battle about to kick off.



It would be really cool if each "faction" (Marik, Kurita, Wolf Clan, etc.) had SPECIFIC modifiers (plus and minus) during combat to encourage different play styles and mech configurations depending on the faction you are oriented with.

This was discussed early on when talking about CW. The limitations on what we can dynamically change in the game show that this type of behaviour would be a huge overhaul of key game systems and that is not going to happen in our current time frame. On a side note, we probably wouldn't go to 'Mech subsystem levels for modifiers but more along the line of global economy changes. I will update if we do implement anything along these lines.



How will the date advance if you reset the CW map/season?

The change we made to allow players to control the outcome of the IS/Clan invasion changes the restrictions we'd have for timeline advancement. The thought process behind seasons is a chance for us to make any necissary changes to the planetary systems depending on the outcome of player behaviour and participation. We do not want to see the IS Map get locked down permanently by one faction and never see it change again. However, we are not against seeing one faction dominate the IS, we just want a method of resetting to give everyone a chance again. This also touches on the ability gained by players to change factions between seasons.



The coffer wont get reset at each season right?

Wow.. that would be reallly bad. *writes a note*  ;)   No, we will not reset coffer balances between seasons.



Can you just do a 3 minute promo/trailer video showing (WIP) of all of the CW features? That's a lot of detail that is hard to associate with how it actually applies in the game.

I will gladly do this when we have more visual stuff to present. We are still finalizing layouts and mock-ups for the UI part of CW and the map/mode is near a point of doing captures for display at a WIP level. This will probably happen next update.

Maybe we can see attack and defend mode have different modes or scenarios to give each planet a flavor or symbol likeness to it so that players know that they are invading or defending that particular planet.

It will be very clear as to what is happening on a given contested planet. You will only be able to make choices based on the factions involved and your personal alignment.



One thing that strikes me about the proposed system is the sheer volume of notice spam that is going to occur every time the engagement timer clicks off.

Current plan is a scrolling marquee along the bottom of the FE. This will have prioritized messaging calling out attacks that have been triggered. It will not be a wall of text spewing across your screen. The Call to Arms is more of a "go check out the Faction Tab now" system rather than "Match 10984 is kicking off now".



Will there be new maps for different planets?

For each individual planet? No, that is logistically not possible. However, we are going to start process refinement to get as many maps out as quickly as possible for CW.



Will we have different models of dropships that we can buy depending on our alignment to a faction?

The Drop Ship is currently just a game mode element. It is not something that you own. Further down the road however, when we decide to put logistics into the game, then yes, drop ships, jump ships etc will start making a difference in how you move around the IS Map and into battle.



As was mentioned earlier... single players queuing up for a drop don't have any logistics placeholder costs that units seem to have, so aren't you essentially taxing the ability to drop with your fellow unit members?

A single player will have a drop cost, it just won't be as high as a Unit.



How do you intend to handle increasing wait-times for matches if there are not enough attackers / defenders for a planet? Would you consider Training Ground like "PvE" filler missions?

If a planet is attacked, and no defenders show up within a reasonable time frame, the attackers will automatically get the win on that planet.



Is it possible to add a little faction icon maybe to every mech in the store / the mechlab, so that one can see at a glance all the factions that use that specific 'Mech?

With Phase 2 focussing on Clan and IS separation only, there is no need for this icon. However, as we move forward into future features like historic or specialized battles, we will indicate which 'Mechs will be valid for which types of conflicts at that point.



What are LPs supposed to be other than a numerical representation of how loyal you are to a faction?

LP will accrue based on your faction alignment and activities in the Planetary Conquest conflict. The higher you go in a faction's loyalty status, the more rewards you will be earning. Rewards can include anything from specialized faction titles to special in-game items to personalize your 'Mech. (Cockpit items, decals, colors, patterns, etc).



What will happen if the attacker receive 10 tokens and decide to not defend against any further counter attacks from the defenders? Can planets be taken without a shot fired if no one is willing to defend a planet vs unit "x"?

Tokens do not belong to a Unit, they belong to a Faction. If Davion forces attack a Kurita planet and get 10 wins in their favor, Kurita can still issue counter attacks. If no-one defends against the counter attack, Kurita will take one of Davion's tokens back.



Is the design goal of planetary conquest to give a match based more on objectives than taking out the enemy forces? To give an exampe, Conquest mode as it exists currently is still primarily focused on taking out the entire enemy team as opposed to winning on capping. Capping is the secondary objective and is the least likely victory condition.

MWO is an online multiplayer game that is always going to be focussed on the PVP aspect of a battle. PVE campaigns have been talked about and will be investigated in the new year.



We have to be able to swap ALL modules between ALL 4 mechs between the spawn periods, otherwise this will be a huge disincentive to all pilots, especially those who don't own that many! You don't want that greenhorn that just bought his first module to feel disadvantaged after he lost his first mech!

Remember that modules are considered end-game content. They are hard to unlock and relatively expensive to purchase which means the decision making behind what you spend your CBills on is a very consious decision that you make on a case by case basis.



Is dropship mode the only mode available for CW? Will there be any way for people who do not want to play respawn mode to not play respawn mode, and still take part in CW?

As stated last time, Drop Ship mode is slated for CW use only.



Are there set number of battles that can occur for a single planet to determine the outcome or is it as many battles within the 24 hour window?

It is many battles in a 24hr period.



Any plans to make respawns that still feel like we are playing a simulation game instead of an arcade?

Since Drop Ship releases 'Mechs in waves and the way it will be presented, it should add greatly to a simulation feel rather than arcade. We are not doing instant respawns like Unreal Tournament. It is a set of 3 relatively intense waves of re-enforcements.



Isn't every battle just plain old IS vs clan? if a planet is contested, does it matter if the IS players dropping on a single planet are a mix of davion, kurita and liao, etc? or the clan players are a mix of different clans?

The invasion conflicts between Clan and IS forces will be supported by all factions under each force. This means any clan can participate in an attack on an IS planet. Any IS faction can participate in defending an IS planet from the Clans. Border conflicts between factions however will only involve the factions that share the contested border.



Why such small drop windows? why can't the planet be available to battle for 24hrs (or 12 hour segments or 6 hour segments) so every player in the world gets a chance to attack/defend that planet during a real day?

We will adjust the conflict windows as needed. We just don't want to strain the public gameplay, where you will be doing most of your C-Bill earning, for the entire day. We will be choosing however many peak player times as possible to accomodate players from all over the world. Again, this is all adjustable based on the number of players participating.



Are you going to be able to give us the ability to set a tithe for our guild?

Taxation for a Unit is something we can add at some point. We just want to make sure we cover the basics first. This is why there's a journal for coffer donations available to the Unit leader.



So for setting up our dropships for CW; could we "favorite" 'mechs so that we can just jump right in and not have to select them each time.

This is something we hope to have ready for CW release.



How strongly are you tied to seasonal resets?

We will be monitoring how the whole CW aspect plays out and will make adjustments as needed. As mentioned above, it also allows players to switch factions at some point so they can play both sides of the Clan Invasion.



Can you make the new invasion map(s) available in the testing grounds and private lobbies so both solo players and units that want to play Community Warfare can try them out and practice on them?

We yet to make the call if we are going to put invasion maps into private matches. Will update when we do.



Are there going to be any governing councils/bodies of any type in CW with real staff playing key roles in their chosen factions? Marik is a representative democracy, Davion a constitutional monarchy etc.

Not for Phase 2. The more we look at true faction role-playing, the more it becomes apparent that this is Phase 3+ content.



Will different planets impact the likelihood of getting different maps?

Our map rotation process is still being planned. Will update as soon as we iron everything out.



Why should we defend our planets? If we don't defend the enemy cannot take them because they can't get 10 tokens.

A non-defended planet will reward the attackers with wins if defenders do not respond within a reasonable timeframe. [10] minutes for example.



Thanks for your questions!

If your question wasn't directly answered, again, please feel free to repost in the next feedback thread. It will get answered eventually.

[Hoax]

Drop Ship Mode is such a bad idea.

As much as I love getting tonnage limits instead of 3/3/3/3 its just retarded that they would try to jam a new game mode into CW instead of making the actual systems they need for CW.

Things that are totally fucked about CW so far:

1) Zero population imbalance systems detailed. There is literally no comeback mechanics, no anti-zerg, no incentive to join/fight for small pop factions. None of that has been addressed so far. Anyone who has played online games knows what is about to happen if they don't get out in front of it.

Davion Steiner and Wolf are going to crush everything just through talentless zerging.

2) No matchmaking of any kind. Just crazy. I mean toss elo because it doesn't seem to work that well anyways but there is not one system to put bad players on teams with other bad players against teams made up of bad players. Instead CW will actually give you worse teammates and bigger stomps with what they have so far described only as 100% pure First In First Out matching. This will basically doom CW to having a tiny population if it just doesn't die out completely no matter how small they make the time windows for it.

3) 100% new game type? Nobody knows. They keep ducking the question. Do they even have some kind of intelligent system for when a drop is Invasion game mode? Even worse are they throwing out all non-invasion maps and the other game modes for CW? Can't be that stupid can they? Variety was going to feel limited to matter what but this is crazy. It means absolute best case scenario that CW launches with 3 maps, 2 of which will barely be tested.

[Lantyssa]

If our unit has to align, I vote the starting House be Steiner.  (Cue an even split between all of them.)

Maybe have a raffle drawing based on the number of votes.  Mercs sometimes have to take what they're offered.

[Falconeer]

Considering we are mercs, it's all the same to me. Steiner is OK. We are gonna betray them anyway at some point 

[Hoax]

If you guys really don't care you ought to avoid Steiner or Davion just because you'll get more fights and shorter queues with anyone else.

Population is probably going to be:
Davion > Steiner >>>> Kurita >> Liao, Marik > FRR

Also fuck Steiner on principal and based on what I've seen of the major Steiner units in game. They are almost as annoying as the zerg clan units like CGBI and CWI.

inb4 but the fist is such a good logo, which is the only nice thing you can say about that house. Oh and I guess the cartoon, people love to bring up the cartoon to prove Steiner is cool.

[satael]

I'm fond of FRR but as a merc any house is fine.

[Hoax]

I know f13 people love to game in odd ways but if you give half a fuck about CW and you are going to stick in a [f13] merc unit you really ought to put some thought into the choice and if they go through w/ this system where mercs are forced to pick 1 faction (temporarily or whatever) pick one that has a big public VOIP that is welcoming and where you'll be able to find and form pick up groups.

Solo dropping CW is not going to be much fun and you guys are never going to form a full 12-man. I don't know about any house but Marik but I believe all of them have some kind of major pick up group coordinating voice server.

[eldaec]

Which one drives Cicadas? I vote for them.

[Hoax]

They tossed the whole faction mech thing sadly, every IS faction gets all IS mechs.

Cicada is a Marik mech though for the record.  You know you want purple mechs.

[Shannow]

Purple Cicadas? Fuck yeah!