A serious conversation on mechs.

In my incredibly geeky world, there are two kinds of mechs:

1. Leg Tanks These are war machines. They are what we've seen in the animations and pictures. They're also clunky, yet badass.

2. Exo Suits
These are almost an extension of the player's body. You can equip weapons, and customize to your heart's content.

My hope is that both will be included. Thoughts?

 

As long as I get an AT-AT ill be a happy camper, the rebels however, not so much.

 

I think I need to look at Exo suits with another perspective. All I can picture right now is it being a armor set you could get, instead of being a mech.

 

Want to make anything better just add AT-AT's and walkie-talkies also no rebels come on

they blew up two death stars

 

Think something like this

Oh yes. This is what I want in Starbound. There are other better videos showing it in combat, but they have embedding disabled

 

There are so many more kinds of mech bro.
So many more.
Also by 'leg tank' I assume you mean 'Walker'
Whereas the term 'Mech' usually talks about something humanoid in shape, like a Battleoid (Robotech), A Gundam (From Pokemon. No, obviously from Gundam) or you could even say Transformers in their human-shaped form, if they could be piloted.

 

This would be my exosuit of choice...bring it on

 

But of course! If I can get my avatar to look like Zero Suit Samus my character will absolutely be a mech-suited bounty hunter

 

exo suits you say NS2 player are WE?

 

I've always pictured it like the VS's from the Lost Planet franchise personally

 

I want the mechs to look like the ones from battletech. (Mechwarrior)

 

This please.

 

What other kinds of mechs are there?

The only two I can think of are also the ones in the OP:

Ones you pilot, like a tank or ship with legs
Ones that encase around your body, like in Metroid or the Marines in StarCraft. Though I've never heard the term exo suit.

 

I would certainly like to see some form of both of these in-game. Perhaps not to the extent of the poster above me or at the level of NS2 or 40k exo-suits/dreadnoughts (both around 7-10 ft tall), but something more along the lines of modern-day exo-suits, like the Raytheon XOS 2 exo skeleton, but perhaps a bit bulkier, more protective, and more possible nodes to go with.

Mechs, however, should be much larger, bulkier, and have, perhaps, different archetypes. There is another thread that talks about this, something along the lines of:
General battle mechs, having all weapons available to them and each taking a node. This would have a standard node system which you could add more nodes, but it would create weak joints in the Armour, since the full plate of the armor is displaced by a node.
So, for each node, you can place two one handed weapons in it, or one "two handed" weapon in it. Then, there could be a special node, or rather two special nodes. One would be in the back of the mech, which would give it certain abilities. Nothing major, just an add on to the generator (more on this later) that can move more power to the legs, making you move faster, perhaps giving a jump ability (which will cost extra fuel every-time you jump), a system that moves more power to the weapon systems, giving them overall a higher rate of fire, for energy weapons (if there are such things) it will give them more damage.

Then, a second special node would be on top of it's head. You could add things such as an RC signal, which could link up to a computer (not sure if computers are intractable or not) or just a device. This wouldn't let you actually "control" it, but you could send general orders to it, such as patrol between two points (must be on a relatively flat surface, not more than, say, 150 blocks apart). Another option could be general visionary assistants for the player. Such as floodlights, perhaps another weapon (laser beams out of eyes anyone?) and eventually being able to upgrade into NVG or even thermal vision, allowing for cave diving in a mech.

Now, these "special" nodes would be universal on all mechs, though more advanced archetype mechs (e.g: Battle mech, Assault Mech, Heavy Assault Mech, Bastion Mech) will have more special nodes, so for a Bastion mech, for example, you might use one of the special nodes for a battle-mech-archtype specific weapon, such as a MIRV launcher or heavy laser, etc.

Then there would be exploring mechs and mining mechs. This would probably be the end of the archetypes, as mechs are mechs and not computers, so we can't have farming mechs that take care of your crops.


So, for the exploring mechs, they would be a very basic mech template, but much more maneuverable than the other two mech types. Some of it's special nodes could include a running type module, jumping higher (perhaps thrusters?), increased view distance (when you move your mouse away from your character and press the special button, not sure what it was but it's in the general information thread somewhere) and the ability to be able to log things without leaving the mech.

I don't think there would be many tiers for the exploring mech, maybe two, and then the third tier would be a ship in itself, so you can have two ships. I'm not really into exploring so I'm sure someone else could come up with something.

For the mining mechs they would be mid-way between the battle mechs and the exploration mechs. The higher tier you go, though, the frame itself won't change much, except get bulkier on it's top-half to support more advanced mining systems. It's special nodes, instead of one on it's back, would be one on it's mid-section support frame, which you can add specialized mining equipment to, such as heavy bore which don't go faster than a normal mining tool, but do much more width and length, good for strip mining. Then another where it would be much faster, but only have a slightly bigger mining length/width than a normal mining laser/device.

Now, for more universal traits on mechs, they would all run on generators. These won't count as nodes unless you want to put another in the back special node slot, which would increase all attributes to the mech but not more than specified nodes.
So, for example, the universal engine/generator would give +10% walk,+10% ROF, +10% etc. while a specialized ROF node would give +30% ROF or even higher at more advanced tech levels of it, which is only available to the General battle mech.
All the mechs would require engines/generators which will either require fuels (that you can mine, will probably share with other basic fuel sources but can be refined for more effective mech fuel) or electricity from a charging station, probably on your space station (not your ship).
Head slots will also have universal ones, such as visibility/NVG,etc. but they will also have specific ones for each archtype. Mining mech gets an upgrade that lets you penetrate through the ground using radar to find specific metal types. This would start at any metal type and then be advanced to more specific metal types later on. The battlemech would get target acquisition/notifying nodes.

For weapons/items, they can all equip most types of weapons/items that the player can use (as in weapons, miners, etc., not blocks to build or place) including rifles, pistols, swords, shields, etc. They will all have their own advantages and disadvantages, however, such as the miner using a minigun or assault rifle will suffer poor accuracy, ROF and recoil. The battlemech won't have efficient power systems for use with miners and can overload the miner (destroying the item) or it simply not working. There will be some weapons that simply cannot be equiped by some mechs. For example heavy weapons such as rail-guns, MIRVs/missile launchers, etc. will only be able to be wielded by the battlemech.

Wow I really just let go most of my thoughts on how I would like my favorite sand box game that has mechs but doesn't make them the focus of the game.

I'm sure you'll all not really care that I have refinements and addition to make to this post but right now gonna go play some Chromehounds.

 

Can I get a TL;DR rundown of the above post? Because holy sh*t, overkill.

 

TL;DR? I can try.

Basically, 3 types of mechs with multiple tiers requiring a lot of research for each advancement, as well as advancement of their own modules, I.E weapons, miners etc.
They all run on engines which require generators. The generators run off energy. Either fuel (which you can dig out of the ground and refine or just use raw) or charging from a specific item. They can all wield most weapons/items but aren't as effective as other archtypes, I.E miner isn't effective with weapons but can and should probably still mount them for self defense while mining.

There are two special modules, growing by one for every tier you advance in the mech line. They give special abilities or equipment or can be given basic, universal generators that increase all abilities (speed, rate of fire, health/armor, fuel consumption) or speciality modules that increase a specific trait by 3-4 times the amount of universal. You also mount the archtype specific equipment here, such as MIRV launcher or heavy laser for Battlemech, strip miner for mining mech etc.

They will be housed on your space station when not deployed, though you don't have to have them up there when you're not using them. You either have to use the space station to customize/equip them or make special benches/whatever for that.

That's the jist of it, my other post goes into a bit more detail and repeats myself more often.

 

Guilty as charged.

 

i'd like clockworks:

 

This would be pretty handy to have