After a super long period of no new content, the MWLL Community Edition dev team is proud to finally present one of our most highly anticipated additions to MechWarrior: Living Legends - heavy VTOLs! We can officially say it now, triumphantly: Gunships today!
Karnov Prime
Anhur Prime
These VTOLs had been on our scope since the development revival of 2016. It took a few years and a couple sacrifices to the CryEngine code gods, but eventually we overcame the insanity of the nightmare spaghetti code! This, we hope, will be a worthwhile and fun addition to the game.
How do the HVTOLs work and what's their function? While we won't delve into all the intricacies of the former (that might as well be a college course on jankiness and hacking), we will say that the HVTOLs are essentially light VTOLs with tank turrets mounted to their sides - much like mechs are player characters with torsos replaced by tank turrets. Movement uses the new VTOL flight system implemented back in v0.15.0. Of course, the heavy VTOLs move, turn, and pitch much slower than their lighter counterparts, seeing as they're 40 tons heavier. Expect to be flying with the agility of a brick - a very well-armed brick.
Functionality-wise, heavy VTOLs double as both gunships and Battle Armor transports. Additionally, both vehicles' variants are able to support a role as either a Battle Armor spawnpoint or as an ammunition store. This opens up yet more strategies your team can employ on the battlefield! For instance, now Battle Armor can be dropped into combat zones like paratroopers, and ammo can now be provided to important areas much faster than with an APC. Of course, with the firepower and utility they bring, heavy VTOLs aren't cheap; they cost about four times as much as an APC. Lastly, each heavy VTOL mounts unique weapons, respective to their techbase.
Seeing as the Anhur is going in currently untextured, we'll show off both of these new toys more thoroughly in a future article!
Weapon Changes
This brings us to the next new addition in v0.16.0, two new weapons:
Rocket Launcher 10 - This ancient weapon has modernized a bit and found its way into the stockpiles of most periphery nations, and even Successor States. A simple, one-shot, unguided volley of ten rockets is fired. It's a dirt-cheap system and best at short to medium range. In MWLL, the RL-10 currently only appears on the Karnov, is hard to use (launchers are fixed to wings and don't track with crosshairs), and fire one slow-moving missile at a time. We should also mention that the RL-10 does not support additional tons of ammo.
Anti-Personnel Gauss Array - Though not an array in BattleTech's universe, the AP Gauss is a scaled-down Gauss Rifle that fires armor-piercing supersonic flechettes. This system was created by the Clans in 3069, and meant for anti-infantry and anti-battle armor work. In MWLL, the APG Array combines three such rifles, with a collective damage output of roughly three standard small lasers. Each rifle fires a rapid burst of fast-moving projectiles. Like the RL-10, APG Arrays do not support additional tons for ammo. These arrays are also currently exclusive to the Anhur VTOL.
Aside from these two new systems, a bunch of other weapons have received tweaks. A few honorable mentions: Flamers now have a stronger damage modifier against vehicles; Cluster Arrow-IV has been un-nerfed some; and all Thunderbolt launchers now share the same refire rate as the TBolt-20. We may see future updates expand availability of the RL-10 and APG Array to other assets, but for now we'll have to keep an eye on how they perform.
Controls Reset
The final major component with the new VTOL changes is - rather unfortunately - a controls reset. Yes, we get everyone hates having to redo all their keymappings and weapon groups. It's a side-effect of having to update the default control scheme when implementing certain new stuff. Additionally, a new version of Actionmapper is shipped with v0.16.0, which moves the free reticle keys from the Mech tab to the Vehicle tab. Before updating to v0.16.0, please try to take note of your current keymaps. If you were using the default controls before, just be sure to check Actionmapper that the free reticle keys are mapped correctly. Otherwise, please ensure you've cleared any keybind conflicts in Actionmapper before launching the game!
That more or less sums up the big parts to this new update! As usual, there's a good number of variant tweaks and balance and weapon adjustments, plus a couple bugfixes. Oh, and a couple new server variables to control asset spawning and build times.
As always, you can find the full changelog at Wiki.mechlivinglegends.net
Though we're finally past one of the last big hurdles, there's still more new content and updates in store. Thanks for being patient, by the way.
Till next time, everyone!
Nice update,i like the new vtols
Great update and good content, as always!