Dev Diary: Intro to ‘Mech Bay – Part 2

Back in December, Chris C from Roadhouse Interactive, gave us the 1st part of the ‘Intro to the ‘Mech Bay), this past Tuesday (yes, I’m late getting this post up, sorry), we got the second half.

Like the first half, this one is full of good information, especially if you’re not in the Closed beta yet.

We get a quick summary of some variances in card types for Chassis:

Pre-Installed Cards
Some Chassis come with cards that are pre-installed. Some of these cards can be overridden and some cannot.

Locked Cards
If a card on your ‘Mech has a small “locked” icon on it, there is nothing you can do to that card. It is built in and you cannot remove or override it.

Soft Locked Cards
If a card on your ‘Mech has a small “unlocked” icon on it, you cannot remove that card, but you can drop another card on top of it, overriding it. If you remove the card on top, the “default” card will still be underneath. We refer to this as “soft locking” the card.

Open Slots
If the card has no “locked” or “unlocked” icon on it, you can add to, remove from or swap these cards around your Chassis at will.

The ‘soft lock’ system to allow upgrades (Say, upgrading a stock PPC, with a Rare PPC you get from a STAC (presumably, the article doesn’t go too much into detail about what can be upgraded) will be interesting… if nothing else, it should make upgrading a chassis to Ferro-Fibrous Armor, or Endo Steel Internal Structure easier when MechWarrior Tactics gets to that part of the timeline.

In the screenshots posted in the article, we also get a peek at some of the special abilities pilots may have, as well as a glance at the names of some tactics cards (cards that give your pilot small situational bonuses).

Look at all those tactics!
Look at all those tactics!

From this screenshot, we can see that our pilot is a Rare card (the purple color background in her card) named Tasha Waylen.

She has 3 (well, 4, but one doesn’t appear to be listed on the card) special abilities.

  • All Foil Cards in Mech:
    • Any Foil weapon card equipped in the chassis, will receive the GutPunch special ability (in addition to whatever bonuses that card/weapon may have already had).
  • Mech has 2+ Lasers:
    • If the ‘Mech that Tasha is piloting has 2 (or more) lasers, then she’ll receive the GiantKiller ability (again, in addition to any existing bonuses).
  • Splitfire
    • If Tasha is able to fire on more then one target, she’ll get a small to-hit bonus.  Which is good, because in TableTop, splitting your fire gives you a small to-hit Penalty.  So this offsets that.

 

These really show off the synergy system that the MWT team has talked about.  You’re going to really want to build your ‘Mechs around the MechWarrior, to maximize the bonuses you can receive.  Note, that pilots don’t have a flat Combat Value (CV).. they add a percent increase onto the CV of the ‘Mech (30% in this case).  That should help keep all the bonuses in check, and not create any ‘I win’ buttons.

We can also see the names (but, not the effects) of some of the tactics cards that are currently in the game.  We can see “Laser Ace”, “LRM Ace”, “MG Ace” for example.  With those names, it’s easy to assume that they are giving some sort of bonus to Lasers, LRMs, and MGs respectively.  Tactics cards with less obvious names (Phase Shift, Wave Burst), don’t really give as much of a clue as to what benefit they provide.. so, hopefully, we’ll get a tactics specific Dev Diary to cover some of that.

Searching

In the weapon view screenshot, we see that we’re going to be able to search for specific weapons.. which will come in handy, especially after the game has been out for awhile, and people have accumulated huge decks (like sorting through the 20 pages! of paint/patterns/decals that are shown in another screenshot).  Since they’ve talked about manufacturer bonuses, I hope you’ll be able to sort on manufacturer as well as just weapon type.

 

I’m glad we’re seeing the return of the Dev Diary series from Chris.. I know they’ve been busy (look, the MWT website got a facelift this week too!), I hope this signals the return of these on a regular basis…it’s been kinda dry information wise for MWT..

Head on over, and read the full Diary, register on the forums, participate in the community.. and become a Founder (if you haven’t already!)