Upgradable User Customized Mechs

Obtained through quest perhaps, but regardless found as a decaying derelict mech, you haul it up to your ship. Housed in the engineering bay where you repair, recharge, and outfit it, it will wait there to be called down.

The mech could be customized peice by peice, similar to your own character's equipment. You outfit it, or "equip" it, with parts you either find, craft, or buy. Doing so would take time, perhaps even fuel, or rather the time it takes reduced with fuel if you so wish. As a result it would be useful to test out parts in VR before outfitting or even before building the parts.

Virtually every part could be customized, It's legs and arm mounts, sub weapon mounts, back mounts and any other sub mounts, It's systems and sub systems, even the method it is called down to the planet. Perhaps a few of these would be linear permanent upgrades, such as armor plating, available sub system slots, extra sub weapon mounts, maybe even extra arm mounts/interchangeable on the field backup arm mounts, as well as bay efficiency upgrades for faster repairs and outfitting.

Some parts may be capable of being procedural, specifically the weapons. As carrying around huge mech parts is absurd in most situation, a special type of blueprint could be implemented. Using these blueprints with your engineering bay will store the procedural part it describes, as usual, the difference is you can reprint the blueprint and remove it from your building list if you want.

The mech itself would have HP as well as energy, when it is retrieved by your ship the wait time to call it down would depend on damage taken and energy used, time to repair and recharge, as well as base wait time for maintenance and prep, time could be reduced for fuel cost. A shield as a sub system, or maybe even a dedicated system slot, could be an option. Shields could either be separate, depend on, or pull directly from mech energy to reduce or prevent mech hull damage, could depend on shield itself.

There could be great diversity in mech parts, with parts influencing max HP, difficulty in repairing, energy usage, even weight. Sub systems could be similar to techs, some with passive bonuses and some actively used. The difference between sub systems/main systems and all other parts is that systems are not visible on the mech, never having physical implementation on the outside of the mech, a surefire main system would be the main energy core, affecting energy usage and max energy, needed to run. A possible sub system being a cloaking device of some sort. Outer parts may or may not physically move, but are always visible.

There could even be parts for using the mech for other things than combat. Parts that help with farming, building, or mining. As such there could be the possibility of bay upgrades to allow multiple configurations to be chosen from and called down, taking time to switch presets, or even multiple mechs to have ready for launch. Ideas for sub/back mounts include mini drone bay. Possible for AI upgrades to mech so it fights by itself when you are not in it, so you can call it down for backup, or let it guard you as you do other things, or just reak havoc as you watch.

Also might be cool to have storage in mech and let it act as various crafting equipment. A small compartment inside to sleep, or chill out, or craft in peace would be cool, with the AI to protect you if you wish.

Special music for combat while in the mech would be amusing, if unnecessary perhaps.

 

what he said ^

 

I think this is a great idea and would love to see something like it in the game.

 

This would be awesome, the vehicle bay could be one of the upgrades you could add onto your ship.

 

I do need to edit that to make it easier to read, but yeah, I felt inspired at the time, was on a roll.

 

Very detailed, I like it. Though it would be awesome if you could jump of of the hangar on your ship and just fall down onto the planet it a flaming piece of metal.

 

Vehicle bay that you could build custom mechs and stuff at would be awesome.

What if there was a drop-pod type vehicle, which you could use as an alternative to beaming down, and upon landing would set up a small base of operations?

 

I think I have it, Engineering bay, Mechs is one of the many things that can be made and launched, likely the most variant and customizable as that is the original focus of my post, but yes. Things like mini mobile bases and such might be possible. In general I was thinking that you never find actual parts or anything for the mechs or other things, you find blueprints only, so you have to make everything yourself, in the engineering bay. A use for large amounts of metal bars. A recycler for scrapping old or unwanted parts to help make new ones seems cool too. Part of the overall theme here as well is most of this can take quite a while, and be made to happen faster with fuel.

 

And when there is space combat later on, Mechs would be an inherent danger of boarding enemy vessels, have to face their Mech, if it is operational. Mechs on their own ship will still be hooked up to the ship power too, so they regenerate power.

 

Sounds good to me.

 

I think it would work nicely with the new ship updates they are pumping out, after ship tier 5 (for example) the engineering bay is put into your ship. Support or whatever, I would like to see it haha.

 

However, you didn't really address the issue of space on your mech; you can't really equip a mech, no matter the size, with 30 rocket launchers. What about utilizing a system wherein different chassis give you different points which you can assign to armor, weapons, thrusters/movement? That way, you could have a smaller, faster mobile mech with some flak guns, or a massive hulking tank like Starcraft II's Thor unit.

I also do like the idea of modules that help with farming/mining etc etc. If this ever got seriously considered or someone made a mod, I'd be interested to see how it meshes with the new crop development system they'll be pushing out soon :U

All in all, a very nice concept.

 

The way I think of it the mech would be equipped the same way you are, finite slots for specific areas, with upgrades to increase certain slots, but not by too much. The possibility of changing those slots around with interchangeable bodys exists as well, perhaps tying movement method to the body, as separate interchangeable legs might really difficult to implement. I forgot to add that to the post I guess. Wait, I said similar to your own characters equipment, not specific enough?

Thor chassis would definitely be sweet.

 

I would love for any of my ideas to be seriously considered, I just don't know how to get any to gain steam.

 

It looks like this one's going pretty good already. You have to admit, the mechs in the game feel...placeholder-ish :U

I'd love to have a customizable mech/speederbike/spaceship/what have you in the game.

 

I love the idea, but just a tip, don't post more than once without someone else posting, use the edit button, unless you add an update notification or a piece of news about the suggestion etc.

 

A customized mech? Awesome. Supporter of this idea, of course. Anything to do with mechs and the ability to customize just sends me an electric shock. A satisfying electric shock, that is.

 

Yeah, I tend to be really fidgety about my wording, wanting to make changes or add more. I already do a goodly amount of editing as such.

 

That's alright, just a tip.

 

Another idea I had-

Why stop at *just* mech suits? If you're having chassis, you could have different types like tanks, speeder bikes, etc. Speeders could be small and have slots for one weapon or armor plating, but move really fast and climb mountains with ease.

Tanks could have several weapon and armor spots, and could use different types of propulsion such as treads, wheels, hover-treads, all found in different areas (Hover-treads more likely to be in Apex labs, treads in human bases, etc).

These could be "cheaper" alternatives to mechs, or in the case of speeders, faster ways to get around. Mechs ofc would be more awesome/versatile like the mining and farming modules you discussed up top.