Systems Design Analysis - Non-scaling Combat Depth Approach
Combat Dynamics and Depth in MW5
MechWarrior 5’s approach to creating depth is through creating distinct heuristic shifts at different ranges for different speed/tonnage/loadout matchups that players have to continuously renegotiate by how they designed their mech and weapons systems.
In Contrast - Tactical shooters typically have simpler direct combat heuristics where assault rifles will have a higher consistency of damage at ranges where large directional changes are common, but sniper rifles will have the accuracy and damage advantage at long ranges. The simplicity is a feature that emphasizes outcome distinction on player skill alone.
For RPG and Gear-Based Shooters - Many stat based shooters add little additional depth in spite of their stat and ability systems because they fail to expand the game’s potential viability/optimality space. For example, in simple combat scenarios, The Division’s combat is not more difficult at the late game than early game after correcting for gear stat output, instead relying on level design to create more complex scenarios. This is because weapons behaviors and post-scaled outputs don’t change or increase in complexity as the game progresses.
For Strategic Shooter - MW5’s designs, as further enabled by speed based differentiation means there are more ranges and scenarios in which any given weapon system is designed to excel, while also exhibiting a speed-based efficacy shift across the speed range.
LRMs have homing to improve their very long range efficacy, but diminishing effectiveness as enemy speed increases
AC2 has a high enough rate of fire to easily correct for ballistic drop and travel time to get more shots on target, but AC10 does more meaningful amounts of damage that are harder to land.
PPC has the weight and endurance advantage over autocannons, but it’s projectile speed makes it challenging to land shots near its full range.
The medium laser, being so light, means that few mechs will ever need to forgo outfitting any available energy slot with a medium laser, meaning there is a highly predictable step up in damage exchange rate as mechs enter medium laser range of each other. But it’s long fire duration make it increasingly less helpful in disabling a mech component the faster the target is.
SRMs' blend of weight efficiency, ammo efficiency, damage rate, and burst damage also results in a less uniform, but not uncommon step up in damage exchange rates as mechs enter SRM range.
At the closest ranges, the machinegun’s continuous duty cycle and rate of fire make it the easiest to employ at the closest ranges, meanwhile the AC20 will be able to make the most of an opportunity when a target crosses it’s crosshairs, but makes for a high risk weapon because each miss is compounded by a punishingly slow reload time.
Design Features that Enabled These Concepts
MW5 is able to achieve this because:
The speed bracket was selected such that, over relevant distances, changes are happening at rates that permit players to make analytical choices over pure reaction and intuition.
The range of speeds were selected to allow for a notably meaningful breadth (the fastest speed is nearly 2x the slowest in this range).
Meaningful distances of concern are able to be determined by bracketing ranges by apparent angular speed (assuming a perpendicular velocity to the line of sight) as enabled by the fastest and slowest speeds, which are emphasized by the weapons designs.
A breadth of weapons specializations means the number of combinatorial juxtapositions of mechs and loadouts creates for a rich breadth of scenarios.
Translating Ideas outside of MW5
With MW5, combat can be reduced to effective rate of damage exchange, and speed is used as the primary mechanical differentiator (as opposed to stats-based like HP). Other action/shooter designs can make use of the concepts that without the same system as MW5 by:
Strictly defining preferred vectors of combat style differentiation, e.g. ballistics trajectory, projectile speed, max range, reload speed, damage falloff, minimum ranges, damage output duration, different on-hit results for different part/angles/etc., status effects, etc.
Exploring and identifying constraints for combat scenarios - e.g. ranges, geometric/terrain-based relationships, situations, or conditions that bound the preferred tone and pace of combat. For MW5, based on their real world referents and other experiential considerations, combat is generally constrained to 1.2 km or less, 800 m or less for line of sight combat scenarios. For CS:GO, mechanically combat could extend much further than the game permits because of the weapon’s hit-scan nature, but limit scenarios to distances coverable in 5 seconds or less.
Identify the player definable vector that changes their approach to the combat style differentiations. For example, MW5 uses speed vs armor and payload. Other games have used stealth vs damage output (Hunt: Showdown), or accuracy vs close range damage potential (Sea of Thieves). Weapon-selection based differentiation is one option, but looter shooter designs have also had abilities vs stats choices for gear, RPGs have examples of (elemental) specialization vs generalization.
Within the constraints, push weapons/combat behaviors to excel in narrow contexts, though not necessarily mutually exclusive ones. For example, Quake’s rocket launcher made for a challenging direct fire weapon, but specialized in situations where targets were clustered around additional geometry to bank splash damage. Or in Halo, the alien pistol (Type 25 Directed Energy Pistol) had a charge attack that had a high damage slow velocity attack that excelled at close range situations.
