The MechWarrior Tactics community got a treat today… Chris C. gave everyone a sneak peak at a future build.. well.. part of it anyway. Â He gave us a very thorough look at what the plans are for implementing Chassis via cards (MWT is a CCG afterall). Â Here is his post.
I’m not going to copy/paste the whole thing, but, you do need to go read it.. it has a LOT of information, and I’m only going to recap/discuss a little of it here.
First.. we’re getting new artwork on the cards! Â Here’s what the new cards will look like.. I was going to try and do a side-by-side comparison with current cards.. but I can’t find any public footage of the new card to use.
So, the picture of the Catapult in the middle of the card, means this is the card for a Catapult. Â The CX1 is not a ‘real’ variant, but is how the MWT team is separating stock chassis from customizable chassis (more on that later).
The bottom of the card contains the good stuff! Â First we have “Aldis Hit +2”, this is the ‘set bonus’ or ‘manufacturer synergy’ that the MWT team has talked about in interviews.
Underneath that is LRM15 x2, with the LRM being purple.. this text identifies the weapon load out, as well as the quality/rarity of the weapons themselves.
The next row (4×4, 3×2, etc) is the critical slot ‘blocks’ that are available for customization on the chassis (so 4 4 slot blocks, 3 2 slot blocks, etc..) useful for planning ‘Mech loadouts, without having to go into the ‘Mechbay.
The 1399 to the right of that, is the units CV (Combat Value), this is how ‘Mechs will be balanced (and, by extension, lances) in MWT. Â This is akin to the Battle Value system from Tabletop.. where components/capabilities are assigned a numerical value..totaled up.. and that’s the unit’s BV/CV. Â This is also (in my opinion) one of the key things that will prevent MWT from becoming Pay 2 Win. Â If you go and spend $1000 on cards, and get some super ultra rare card that gives you a ‘Mech with a CV of 5000… you’re going to only go up against other players who have a CV near yours..which, at least initially, will be very few.
The last line, seem to identify the ‘set’ the card came from, and the number of cards in that set.. useful for the CCG part, and for those that ‘gotta catch them all’.
Now that I’ve drooled over the artwork of the new card.. the meat of the actual article..isn’t the artwork.. it’s the description of the 3 chassis ‘flavors’ that are (currently) planned for the game.
First, obvious disclaimer.. The game is still in Beta.. All of this can (and probably will) change before release!
There will be 3 types of chassis in the game:
- Stock Chassis
- Partially Open Chassis
- Fully Open Chassis
Stock chassis are just what they sound like… straight out of the TRO these are the canon chassis, and a few canon variants. Â Weapons, Armor, and equipment are uneditable, but ‘cosmetics’ and the pilot card are editable.
Partially Open Chassis will come pre-equipped with some “better then stock” weapons/equipment, but, are mostly empty and can be customized. Â Whatever comes with the card is a ‘free card’ but, can not be taken off the chassis, the remaining critical slots on the chassis are yours to free up however you want!
Fully Open Chassis will come, well.. open. Â They’ll have the base heat sinks, engine, and jump jets… everything else is yours to populate with whatever weapons, and gear you have in your armory.
My initial reaction to the ‘Partially open chassis’ was that it would be less optimal then the fully open. Â But, after thinking about it some more.. I think the Partially Open Chassis… will allow the MWT team to do some creative things with chassis. Â For a quick example, a Partially Open Chassis could be a Centurion variant, that comes with an AC/20 in it’s arm (yeah, you know the variant I’m talking about! Yen-Lo-Wang!). Â Giving us the chassis + the AC/20.. and leaving the rest of the critical spaces open, would allow us to ‘tweak’ the ‘Mech to overcome whatever weaknesses you think that chassis has (YLW has no long range weapons..this is a flaw IMO, and I would try and mount at least a LRM5 to off-set that). Â It gives us chassis that match the ‘flavor’ of certain units, can be built around an iconic element..but still have that personal touch.
I plan on accumulating as many fully open chassis as I can though, while the partially opens are good.. the real fun lies with the fully open.. that is the one we can rip all the guts out, and cram in something totally crazy to surprise our opponent with…
Next card lesson from the Devs, will be on Weapons.. we should learn a lot more about the manufacturer synergy then!
Make sure you head over to the forums, and read Chris’ whole post..