Walker/Mech/ Heavy Tank Ideas, anyone?

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Wind_Walker, Mar 20, 2016.

  1. thed1rt

    ^^^^ Man those mechs look so bad ***. I think if harrassers could crash into a mech's legs and make it fall over that would be epic. Except maybe the NC mechs. They could be SUPER slow and bulky with thick legs.


    If they make the REWARD for killing a mech awesome enough then they can probably afford to make them a tiny bit OP.

    If a mech vs mech fight happens then no extra reward. But if you are on a harrasser and juke a mech and end up killing it it should give you credit to deploying half of a free mech. If you are on the ground as infantry and ambush a mech kill then it should give you credit to deply a ENTIRE FREE mech. If 1 engineer hides in a bush and puts 5 tank mines on a mech leg, blowing it up, he should get a joyrider mech. This will make the little guys want to kill the big guys instead of just running from the big guys.

    Give the small tiny tactical players a chance to spawn a free mech or reduced half price mech if they take the time to try to topple Goliath as David.

    The mech's should feel a tiny bit OP but give awesome reward. Unless its just Mech vs Mech. Then no extra reward cuz both are even.

    But big giant titan mechs like the poster just above me would be AWESOME if they could figure out how to put them in.

    They should give david vs golieth scenarios BIG rewards. Like if some idiots pull 3 titan mechs and bumble around until a flock of c4 fairies kills them... Then the idiots just handed the enemy 3 free titan mechs.
  2. Corezer

    mechs could have been put in, in the beginning, in place of tanks (basically as a skin, and nothing more)

    They can not be added in later, like everyone is saying.
  3. Metalsheep

    Fun fact: Back in beta and early release, they had a BFR model hidden in a hanger on Indar.

    TR Colossus

    [IMG]

    It was removed to improve performance, it was deemed an unnecessary asset.
  4. Tormentos

    The problem with mobile fortresses would be terrain and mobility. If such a huge object would be implemented, it would best be moved through large open areas like the entire north and southwest of Indar, large areas of Esamir, the valleys of Amerish but that's about it. Such a fortress would be too large to participate in facility fights except for bombardement from the outside, too big to climb the complex mountains of Amerish or walk through the swamps of Hossin with all its trees. This engine is not compatible with this, since trees are static no matter what. They will not make way for a large metal leg, bend and then break. If implemented, Hossin would be a mobile fortress free continent.

    But smaller mechs could roam everywhere except for indoors. I even would go as far and give these things camo nets as exterior addition in order to let them look more gritty and worn.

    What excites me the most is the possible door opened of enabling missiles to vehicles. It could be a gamechanger having a vehicle not fast as a Harrasser, yet of the same size and with extraordinary walking abilities and maybe a jetpack for that one jump over the anti-vehicle shield (where the Harrasser has the shield breaker) to have a trio of mechs jumping into an amp station and haul their missiles out, flanking some tanks guarding the shielded gate.
  5. thed1rt

    They can give big giant mega titan fortress mechs 6 legs and with little clamping feet and give it the ability to climb like kingkong up mountains and top of forts. They would have to program focus on the legs "ATTACHING" to everything it walks on though. And CLIMBING straight up an enemy fort it could only move maybe 2 miles per hour. But sideways on flat land maybe move 30 miles per hour.
  6. ColonelChingles

    The difficulty of having giant mechs is that giant mechs make for giant targets. This means that to survive as giant targets, giant mechs need to have at least one of these traits:
    1) Have a huge HP pool or some other gimmick to avoid damage
    2) Have massive damage so it can kill things before it is killed

    Either one of these traits would make the giant mech much more powerful than any vehicle currently in the game. Even apart from the balancing nightmare that would be, it makes no sense that a mech on legs could have more armour or weapons than a treaded tank.
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  7. Tormentos

    Why bother with armor, when we have shield technology? It could vary from indepletable barrier shields towards one direction like the NC AEGIS shield, an air barrier shield against air bombardement or the good old shield dome around it to all sides like in war of the worlds that depletes under ongoing fire.

    Like I said earlier: The solution is always there, one only does need to think of it. I agree with you that a mech, running on hydraulics, is unable to hold vast amounts of armor and at the same time have the mobility advantage over tanks. But tanks are driving armored engines with a main cannon turret. If we can't pack armor, then we go to the next best thing: an oversized shield generator too big for a MAX to carry, yet slowing down tanks, the only exception to that being the Vanguard.

    Moreso, if these mechs have more than two legs, C4'ing the legs or stepping onto a mine wouldn't harm the entirety of the mech, but this one particular leg. Just like the infantry, shooting the legs would do very little damage, but unlike infantry, you could cripple the mech by blowing off one leg, slowing it down by a big amount. But, and here it comes: If you blast off the torso of the mech, the base of the chassis, you blow the thing to smitherines.

    It could be a damn interesting mechanic to first shoot a leg or two to slow a spider mech down in terms of speed and turn rate, making it an easier target and then others aid you in destroying the weakened opponent. A two legged mech, however... One leg down, that thing canters over and blows up.

    As for the other way around, a multi turret mech like a three seated vehicle with one pilot for the movement and the main cannon and two gunners for the turrets on the sides or even back might give the mech an incredible amount of damage output, even with current weaponry.
  8. ColonelChingles

    Whether you go with shields or armour, the effect is the same with treaded tanks versus legged mechs... tanks can always carry more.

    Let's say that the maximum allowable weight for a tank is 50 tons. Maximum weight for a mech might be 30 tons or so.

    Assume they have the same 100mm cannon and secondaries, taking up a hypothetical 10t on each. And they have the same powerplant (though really the tank's should be a bit more efficient, but since the mech weighs less overall it needs less power) that takes up another 10t.

    At this point, the tank still has 30t to fill, while the mech is only left with 10t of room left. This means that in our hypothetical scenario, the tank can still take on three times the shields/armour of a mech.

    If we say that the mech can carry a 10t shield generator with only the lightest of armour, then a tank can carry the same 10t shield generator plus 20t of armour. Or 3x 10t shield generators. Whatever works.

    To have a mech of equal armour/shielding to a tank, this means you need to either cut back on power (making for a slower mech) or on weaponry (making for a less well-armed mech).

    From a lore/sci-fi standpoint, that's the problem with Mechwarrior/Gundam/etc. It just makes more sense to mount things on unsexy blocky tanks than to create legged vehicles. The only place where mechs might have a slight advantage would be for terrain that is unfavourable for wheels or tracks.
  9. thed1rt

    Mechs should be slow moving forts that can pretty much slow crawl anywhere (maybe even upside down).

    3 or 4 guns so they can insta kill anything that they look at all together. But slowwwwww.
  10. Tormentos

    Well you drive a good argument. But I never said anything about a mech having equal armor plating as a tank or something i would rather go with something equal to a Harrasser, yet a bit more. Since it can't escape that easily, I say let it be damaged by the Archer, C4 and rocket launchers. it's armor is dense enough to withstand small caliber rounds. In my mind a mech is not as fast as a Harrasser, yet not as heavily armored as a tank. I picture it more like a mixture, the light assault of the vehicles, with a jumpjet enabling it to take leaps like a frog, empowering it to jump over shield barriers the (Harrasser could break through), rampart walls and small buildings, vulcan cannons against infantry and missile pods against vehicles.

    It could even get several different chassis types.

    Armored chassis
    Slowing the mech down, cutting the speed in half with twice the amount of armor, but he can take a bigger beating.

    Assault chassis
    To slide to the left and right in order to evade enemy fire quickly (what could kill whosoever is standing next to the mech and is in the way). Fast, sly, having enhanced jetpacks for higher/wider jumps, yet the lack of heavy armor makes the chassis vulnerable and fragile like a Harrasser.

    Support chassis
    Stuffed with a variety of tools and modules, this chassis is being used by medics to make the mech into a mobile shield healing unit or by engineers to use a mechanical arm to wield a larger version of the repair tool. Like the wraith cloak for the Flash being only activated when an Infiltrator is driving, so would these respective tools only activate once the engineer or medic enter the pilot seat.

    Come on, we're not talking about an actual spider here. A mech hanging from the ceiling is just stupid and would never be implemented.
  11. WTSherman

    Well yeah, that's why IRL mechs are unlikely to ever be more than power armor or a very light all-terrain scouting platform. The result would probably be something too light to really be considered armor, but too heavy to be considered infantry. You could class it as probably "superheavy infantry" or "extralight vehicle". Basically AT-ST maybe, AT-AT nope. If you need anything heavy you're better off putting it on tracks. Tanks have a much better surface/volume ratio anyway, meaning they can get thicker armor for less weight. Mechs get punished hard by the square-cube law due to their form factor, which is going to keep them small for practical applications. And if you're in terrain that tracks can't reach? That's what air support is for, and the enemy probably couldn't bring anything there that your infantry weapons can't handle anyway.

    Of course, funnily enough it also depends on what you mean by "rough terrain". Tanks are actually much more mobile than a mech would be in mud, because spreading the weight over a larger surface area makes a tank much less likely to sink...

    Then there's the fact that by the time you have power armor you'll probably just be a small step away from a completely automated fighting force, because a battle droid is just power armor minus the pilot, but that's drifting pretty far off topic.

    Edit: Actually I just remembered a funny thing about Battletech: tanks in BT are actually cheaper Battle Value-for-Battle Value than mechs. This means that if you actually tried to run a fluff-accurate simulation of a protracted war, tanks (or even a conventional combined-arms force) would be a far more efficient use of your CBills than mechs. Granted, CBill costs are pure fluff and so aren't intended to be balanced at all (as far as I know), balance is what Battle Value is for (though as anyone familiar with the system knows, BV does a rather poor job of that too. :p ).

    For example, a 65 ton tank will run you about 2 million CB for 931 BV2 (and you can raise the BV a bit for no cost by replacing the AC/20 with a Gauss Rifle, which costs the same for some reason, though you'll have to shuffle a bit of weight around). A 55 ton 'Mech will run you about 10 million CB for 1223 BV2, or enough to buy five of those tanks and have money left over. Though it's not quite universally true: the Behemoth II for example is ridiculously overpriced for a tank, while an Atlas is ridiculously underpriced for an assault mech (in fact it costs less than the Bushwhacker for no apparent reason). The Axel still manages to be more CB-efficient than even the Atlas though.

    BT actually seems to get the square-cube law backwards for mechs: bigger mechs tend to be more cost-effective in that game than smaller ones, while smaller tanks are more cost-effective than bigger tanks (and smaller mechs).
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  12. ColonelChingles

    There's a reason why Google is selling off the legged robot maker Boston Dynamics... there's just not a future for legged robots. In the meantime, we see increased investments in automated traditional vehicles.

    Really, anytime people want to throw in a legged mech/vehicle in the game, they should first ask themselves one simple question... why not put it on a tank?

    But we can invent some shield that will negate the mech's lack of armour!
    Why not put it on a tank?

    [IMG]

    But we can load the mech with recoiless rockets or missiles to negate the mech's lack of stability!
    Why not put it on a tank?

    [IMG]

    But we can outfit the mech with a long-range sniper cannon so it doesn't have to risk getting hit!
    Why not put it on a tank?

    [IMG]

    But we can give the mech a super-efficient engine that will let it run really fast!
    Why not put it on a tank?

    [IMG]

    But we can give the mech jumpjets so that it can soar through the air!
    Why not put it on a tank?

    [IMG]

    But we can supply the mech stealth with cloaking technology!
    Why not put it on a tank?

    [IMG]

    The only reason to ever have a mech in the game... is to just have a mech in the game. There's no logical reason why a military would introduce a bipedal weapons platform that is so obviously inferior in 95% of cases compared to traditional tracked vehicles.
  13. Pikachu

    How about a tankette? Just wide enough to enter buildings. :D It would be like a flash but enclosed, more duarble, with a turret and able to turn in it's place. I would love driving that thing into buildings like I do with my flash. Spamming fury indoors annoying and surprising people.
    [IMG]
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  14. Tormentos

    Come on, a tank with a jumpjet? First, this would look silly. Second, and more importantly: You would need a ramp and enough speed to make a jump. Or, if we are talking about the tank practically jumping... It's a tank, not a VTOL!

    Moreso, a mech has more of a fearfactor. Its size and towering chassis stomping right at you gives a whole different feeling than a cube of metal with a cannon on top of it driving towards you. When ED-209 walks towards you, you take a gulp and try your best not to crap yourself.

    Next you want to put wings on a tank and get rid of all airplanes? And if the devs were able/willing to put missile systems on tanks, why haven't they done already in 3 years? Maybe because an armored vehicle in the distance, difficult to destroy with precise cannon rounds while being hammered with (maybe even guided) missiles would be imbalanced?
  15. Wind_Walker

    Nice, a lot of good points here. I think what PS2 would probably benefit more from (opinion here, torches down please) would be slow, beefy walkers rather than fast, fragile mechs. These would definitely need to be multi-crew, also. Reason would be so that you would need 1-2 more people to maximize its potential.

    A common thing I see with mechs in other games when placed in the same area in tanks: Vantage point. Since you can see from a higher POV than your tank teammates, you can open fire from farther away. The tradeoff from that, however, is making yourself a more prominent target. You can see them, but they can also see you, and you can be darn sure they'll be firing back. Depending on the leg mechanics, the mech would also have access to more immediate lateral movement than the tank counterparts. The tradeoff to that would be lower leg armor.

    There was someone earlier in this thread that said we needed weak points on the walker to give somewhat of a dynamic in terms of how to deal with it, and all I have to say is YES. The rear armor weak point on tanks was nice. ESFs could have used a cockpit weak point to reward those who aim, but that's just me.

    I personally would like faction flavor to go along with any new addition to the game, especially if it gives a feel of real difference.
    Just as an example of difference between vehicles (don't look at the damage, UT3 is practically insta-gib anyways lol):


    I think the Darkwalker (last one) practically screams VS alien tech
  16. AxiomInsanity87

    I really think that if we have mechs, they need to be reasonably slow but durable enough to make an impact.

    No jets, afterburners and all that sht please. It would just be stupid and used in the most shtlord fashion possible.

    All 3 faction mechs should be exactly the same other than weapons and aesthetics.

    We could just give maxes a melee and shield option that also doubles hp but es abilities and charge cannot be used?

    LB for swing and RB for raise shield. Make shield smaller than the nc 1 so they don't cry.
  17. ColonelChingles

    And jumpjets on a bipedal humanoid vehicle would not look silly? :p

    Arguably many tanks have more aerodynamic designs (wedged shaped hulls for example) than the human body. We're just a bunch of appendages and a big flat torso.

    If you came to me with a wedged-shaped box and a bipedal humanoid figure and asked which one was easier to make airborne, the easy answer would be the box.

    Makes much more sense for tanks to fly than mechs, really.
  18. Demigan

    Here are some answers to your simple question:
    Awesomeness factor
    it's a game. The sole purpose of a game is to present the fun sides of war (mostly the challenge). This is why games don't have month-long construction times for vehicles, that's why there's rarely an intensive supply line necessary to keep your vehicles fueled, armed and with fresh parts because tanks wear down like crazy. There's a reason tanks are transported to the front most of the time rather than driven there, because it's a million more times expensive in both money and time to do that. I've explained at lenght several times how implausible it would be to have any "conventional" warfare like we have today on a future battlefield. In fact, we'll think about tanks and aircraft like we think of knights in armor and swords. They simply aren't dated and have become unconventional.
    additional variety in vehicle palette (however "unlike real life" this would be)
    Possible future solutions where weight isn't a problem and it's more about versatility and capabilities, and a walking bot could potentially outperform a vehicle.
    New nano-build materials that need 1/100th the weight and thickness to achieve the same of the best tank armors we have now, making vehicles nearly immune to wear and tear and requireing new types of weapons, such as weaponized super-acids designed to break these nano-build materials apart or weaken them enough for concentional arms to break through. There's no need for a bigger canon if you can outmaneuver your enemy and destroy them with smaller weapons anyway.
    etc etc.

    Well this one I can answer: Because a tank does not have as large a range where it can compensate for falling on the ground.

    The other things you might be right with current-day technoloty, but this one is a full 10/10 winner for a Mech. Mech's legs would automatically be designed to withstand impacts and falls much better than any suspension a tank can offer. The ability to collapse them and extend the range over which you can slow down the Mech after a fall make it extremely more useful over a tank.
    The required lower armor scenario's would also mean that the Mech's are more likely to survive a fall as well. In mountainous area's a well-designed Mech could have far more maneuvearbility due to the much smaller surface area it needs to stand. The legs could also be much easier designed to climb steep inclines, although I would probably go for a 4 or 6-legged Mech in that case. Combine that with a jumpjet and you have a massively more maneuverable Mech compared to a Tank outfitted for the same conditions.
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  19. thed1rt

    lol you should click the video in my signature.
  20. Demigan

    I would especially go for the small and nimble Mech's over the slow and durable one's. If you introduce heavy Mech's build for cashing out the damage you instantly replace MBT's role and upset the current balance.
    Much better to add Mechs that serve a specific role in the game, even if it is only offering new ways to play.


    Someone else already proposed this, I would like to add to it:
    Have at least 2 Mechs, one is a Light Mech (LM) and one a Heavy Mech (HM).
    The LM is armed with all the weapons of a Lightning. It also has the same armor. Difference is that it's slower than a Lightning, say half the maximum speed. It is also taller but slimmer, meaning it makes for a higher but thinner target. To offset these disadvantages the LM get's more maneuverability in the form of jumping (if necessary assisted by a Jumpjet). Slopes and inclines also have no effect on your aim similar to how infantry work, meaning that LM's would have an advantage in being better when firing on the move despite their slower speed. It's thin frame would help it fight in tighter corridors.
    The HM would be similar but for the MBT. You have a main canon and a secondary canon on top for a gunner to use. The same advantages and disadvantages apply.

    Now you have Mechs added to the game without upsetting balance. Mechs have advantages when in more enclosed battles, the Lightning and MBT have advantages in more open battles.
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