Kwitch wrote:I just wonder if the entire 'slots' idea could be mixed up a bit somehow and provide more entertainment...
I think it would be interesting if item "volume" was modeled in conjunction with the weapon hardpoints.
So say in Arakhe you have two single slot hardpoints. This means you can mount light, and only light, weapons there. So like a light AC, light missile launcher, et cetera.
But then on Prometheus you have two 2-slot hardpoints and two 1-slot hardpoints which means it's capable of mounting two medium ACs or 2 medium lasers in conjunction with two light weapons sans CPU and power considerations.
And of course a 3-slot hardpoint would allow the mounting of heavy weapons.
You would then have to go back to the current mechs and revise their hardpoints to make them slightly unique.
This way its not as simple as the racial boni with mechs. Someone might want to take a Prometheus but they see the Castel has an extra 2-slot hardpoint at the expense of something else.
I think mech loadouts could get be a little more interesting this way and it just plain makes sense that the bigger a weapon is the more space it consumes aside from it's CPU and power requirements.
This also means that a mech upgrade isn't as simple as "hooray, more weapon hardpoints," perhaps the mech you previously used had the same amount of total hardpoints but your current mech upgrade has larger hardpoints.
This would also allow a lot more mech class overlap as it's no longer, "Hey, but Thedolica already has a light robot for weapons, they don't need another," as you could have another light robot with different hardpoints (so like the Prometheus has four 2-slot hardpoints and a second Thelodica light robot might have one 3-slot hardpoint and two 1-slot hardpoints.
Not to mention you still retain the hardpoint type (laser, kinematics, EM, missiles, any combination thereof) for even more diversity.
So, in summary (TLDR):
Introduce volume in the form of slot consumption:
Light Weapons = 1 slot hardpoint
Medium Weapons = 2 slot hardpoint
Heavy Weapons = 3 slot hardpoint
Last edited by Gaius Cavadus (2010-07-28 18:12:49)