Hi people, i just found this while checking FSO project state and i tried this revisioned MC2. It looks promising and i wish to make some observations and throw some ideas away:
I know you guys want to keep this game difficult balanced and such and the know issue with tonnage mission limit ( which gives you great money if you lower it ) will be addressed soon, but i think you should think about the current cbill rewards for the mission objetives completion. I mean... the player is just a merc, and mercs do this for money. If they dont get enough to buy new assets and buy spares or new equipment they packup and leave to another place looking for more profitable contracts. Im sure there is a way to keep its difficult balanced without make the player poor man and keep him going.
The salvage currently is getting a wrong way imo. You just allow the "combat salvage" in mid-battle to deploy a salvage craft, patchup a fallen mech cockpit and bring it back barely operative, being limited by RP and free pilots. Meanwhile the usual and, lets say, more "cannon" salvage way of deploy that salvage and recovery team than any merc team have and get the spoils from the field.
I would add some ideas here:
- In some missions like base defense, base recovery, convoy escort and some more, you just eliminated all enemy assets and have plenty of time to deploy your Mobile Field Base, make your units pickup stuff with hands/attach salvage cables, and strip fallen units and turrets off their components. In others this not likely to happend so a kind of "salvage allowed" flag could be added
- As some people said this can be used to make "ubber moneizz" once you are in the salvage screen after the mission finished you have a chance to not recover the units, lets say some of the units are beyond any repair or fix ( engine destroyed, reactor damaged....etc ) so instead you have a chance to get a cargo-truck or "Salvaged_Mech" item than holds or equips random components from the doomed unit. So instead than get a free repaired unit you get some spares for your stockpile if you select it and pay its price ofc. This chances are lowered related to game difficult.
- Another way to make salvage is changing the current combat salvage craft for a Salvage Tow, MFB or another kind of vehicle requestable by RPs, piloted or not by one of your free pilots ( or AI ) than pickups fallen units.
- A mix of those systems above, get your Tow to the field and move it to the extraction point, but you cant recover the unit, instead you get the "scrapped" components and makes Cash happy