On June 27 2012 00:57 nohbrows wrote: So I have been sniffing around the MWO site a lot, looking at their forums, and reading their dev Q&As, and I keep on coming up with this "clans" talk. What are the clans and why are they so important?
And will it be necessary to follow the ISN news flash stuff? Cuz I have been ignoring them for now and I am beginning to wonder if that was a good idea.
Lore-wise, the Clans are a technologically superior sect of humanity which left the Inner Sphere 300 years ago. The Inner Sphere does not know they exist. The Clans are split into different clans, usually represented by a "spirit animal", and are divided into two main ideologies, Wardens (who think they should remain isolated from the Inner Sphere) and Crusaders (who believe that the Clans must return to the Inner Sphere and retake Terra).
Clans are a caste-based society with an extreme military focus, with genetically bred warriors and technologically advanced weapons. In the year 3050 (and late 3049), they return to the Inner Sphere, invading through the Rasalhague Republic, and serve as the threat which unifies the Inner Sphere despite centuries of internal strife.
With regards to gameplay, Clan technology is generally better than IS technology. Their mechs have "omni" slots which can house any type of weapon (laser, missle, or ballistic), and their weapons tend to be lighter or have longer ranges. Generally, there is a tradeoff in one aspect of the weapon though, whether it be heat generated or recycle time.
On June 27 2012 02:36 Sabu113 wrote: Could someone explain how the Lyran scouting party of 4 Atlases became a common refrain? It sounds pretty funny/awesome from a story perspective.
Picture was taken from a post by WiljushkA in Igrok's blog.
Steiner has always had the solution of throw more money and bigger mechs at problems to make them go away. Eventually, anything under 80 tons is considered "battle armor" rather than a mech, and you get the "Steiner Scout Atlas" jokes.
Oh the good old days of MW2 mercs and the clan invasion, if some game then that needs to get ported to modern OS. The game was a mess to configure IIRC, but it was so gooooood!
shame Good Old Games hasn't got any of them MW series ported up :\
I also recall the fond moments of my very limited MW3 mech tweaking, ending up with an assault filled with clan ERPPCs to the point of not quite coring myself with an alpha, just shutting down, but had so many sinks fitted in that heat would be nearly 0 by the time the shutdown sequence would finish. An alpha on a stride would just slow temporarily, but a hit from all those PPCs instantly destroyed any part it hit, was fun :D
I tend to follow the daily ISN stuff and most of it is just fluff with the occasional tip of the hat to a feature(or so rumoured). It's actually pretty neat to see it all play out and while it's not actually important yet I could see it having the potential of being important when the Houses start trying to take each others border planets and the like. Or hints of the Clans arrival. So nah you don't have to follow it but if you are bored it's fun to read the comments for the full story/info on any of the people/places/things mentioned by the newsfeed.
On June 27 2012 00:57 nohbrows wrote: So I have been sniffing around the MWO site a lot, looking at their forums, and reading their dev Q&As, and I keep on coming up with this "clans" talk. What are the clans and why are they so important?
And will it be necessary to follow the ISN news flash stuff? Cuz I have been ignoring them for now and I am beginning to wonder if that was a good idea.
You don't have to follow the ISN stuff at all. Frankly, I'm pretty involved over there and even I only occasionally glance at them.
The Clans aren't important at the moment because they're a future event. For the purposes of the game, they don't exist yet. When they show up in about a year, they're a pretty big deal, though.
Story-wise their arrival shakes up the universe quite dramatically. They're basically an army of super-warriors from outside known space that invade and start wrecking face.
Game-wise they matter because their technology is significantly more advanced than what's there now. Put simply, their shit is broken. More power, more range, more speed. It will be very interesting to see how PGI implements them without completely breaking the game. I suspect clan players will have to play like 4v8 or something.
Watched some of these dev vids where they show actual gameplay and gosh am I impressed. Hopefully it's really sound mechanically in gameplay too, promo videos being promo videos..
On June 28 2012 08:40 r.Evo wrote: OH MY GOD. That looks great.
As someone who has loved MW2 Mercs, are MW3/4 games you guys would recommend playing or will I most likely be disappointed?
I don't think there's any way to really tell. A lot of people who loved MW2 are very vocal about how "Mech 3/4 killed battletech" etc. I think they are just a vocal minority, I loved them all.
Yeah it really depends if you're able to accept the changes that came with MW3&4 or if you're a narrow minded person, that wants to play the same exact game all over and over again.
On June 28 2012 08:40 r.Evo wrote: OH MY GOD. That looks great.
As someone who has loved MW2 Mercs, are MW3/4 games you guys would recommend playing or will I most likely be disappointed?
i've been playing mw4:mercs the last few days and its GLORIOUS. mw4 vengeance and black knight are decent too from what i remember, although i played them many many years ago. i even got mw3 to work on windows 7 and its great, though different. its more sim like than mw4 but doesnt have the mercenary feel. mw3 reminds me more of mwo in terms of pacing than mw4 does though. also mw3 had amazingly good briefings and great militaristic atmosphere.
mech commanders (the squad based rts') 1 and 2 are also good, i played them a year or two ago, the first one was a lot better than the second, much better atmosphere and the best intro of all the mw games imo (and quite a bit hard - made every other single player rts look like a joke).
On June 28 2012 08:40 r.Evo wrote: OH MY GOD. That looks great.
As someone who has loved MW2 Mercs, are MW3/4 games you guys would recommend playing or will I most likely be disappointed?
i've been playing mw4:mercs the last few days and its GLORIOUS. mw4 vengeance and black knight are decent too from what i remember, although i played them many many years ago. i even got mw3 to work on windows 7 and its great, though different. its more sim like than mw4 but doesnt have the mercenary feel. mw3 reminds me more of mwo in terms of pacing than mw4 does though. also mw3 had amazingly good briefings and great militaristic atmosphere.
mech commanders (the squad based rts') 1 and 2 are also good, i played them a year or two ago, the first one was a lot better than the second, much better atmosphere and the best intro of all the mw games imo (and quite a bit hard - made every other single player rts look like a joke).
Cheers, I'll look into getting MW4 and the commanders from somewhere then. =S
I really liked three myself, that and two are my personal favourites of the series. I have nothing against 4 but it just didn't play the same for me when I went back to it awhile ago. Of course Revisiting Mechwarrior 2 gives you the fun option of piloting some of the unseen mechs(the Riflemen and Marauder come to mind) which is a treat as it's unlikely anyone will get a chance to be piloting them in MWO or anything else outside of the Tabletop.
The last time I played the MW series I was 4. I fucking loved every second of it. I still remember the names of many mechs, and the shriek of that lightning gun still sends chills down my spine. I will definitely be picking this game up. It seems like it's going to be team-based multiplayer combat, right? If that's the case, are there mechs out there that can, through sneakiness and skill or sheer badassery, engage multiple targets and emerge victorious? I rarely find that kind of role in games, but it's always the most fun, feeling like you can fight your way out of almost any situation.
EPT
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