Economy - SpringMCLegacy/SpringMCLegacy GitHub Wiki

Economy in MCL is relatively simple. Your basic unit of currency is a C-Bill, which is the currency used to purchase Mechs, Outposts, and Dropship Upgrades. There are several different ways to earn C-Bills during matches.

Earning C-Bills

The first way is that every player generates a small amount of C-Bills at all times. It isn't much, but ensures you're always making at least some money, and can't ever go completely bankrupt for very long.

The second method is dealing damage to enemies. Every time one of your Mechs shoots an enemy unit, be it an enemy Mech, vehicle, Outpost or DropShip, you'll earn a bit of C-Bills as a reward.

The third method is by capturing Beacons. You earn a small chunk of C-Bills for capturing a Beacon. Ontop of this, every Beacon you capture increases your background C-Bill earnings.

Salvage

Salvage is a secondary form of currency used to purchase Modifications and Omnimech configuration changes.

Salvage can be earned in a couple of ways. The first is by destroying enemy units; every Mech or vehicle destroyed will drop a piece of salvage that can be collected. Mech Arms liberated from their bodies by damage will also leave behind Salvage when they land.

The second way is via collecting randomized, secret stashes or caches of Salvage pre-seeded on maps. These are invisible until spotted and won't show up on radar, so look carefully during games to spot them. Once opened, a Salvage Cache will drop a pickup worth 5-10 Salvage.

Salvage is picked up by simply moving a Mech onto it. It automatically gets collected and added to your Salvage pool. Battlemech Recovery Vehicles (BRVs) will also collect any Salvage it comes across.

Salvage Yards

Salvage Yards are an Outpost type that allows for the automation of Salvage collection by spawning a Salvage Vehicle that will go out and collect Salvage and return it to the Yard for processing without any input from the player. Think Command & Conquer Tiberium Harvesters.

Points of Interest

Eventually, maps will be dotted with "Points of Interest" or "Ruins", old derelict facilities, buildings, bases and other various kinds of structures that Recovery Vehicles will be able to "farm" for Salvage. Each Ruin will have a finite amount of Salvage to glean from them.

Battlemech Recovery Vehicle

An upgrade for the Salvage Yard is the ability to house BRV's. Larger than the regular Salvage Vehicle, BRV's will be capable of picking up Battlemech wrecks (battlewrecks!) and bringing them in their entirety back to the Salvage Yard for further processing, yielding extra Salvage from the mas well as offering a randomized chance to instead return the Mech to active service with a new pilot.

Mech Tonnage

Weight is an important factor in space travel, particularly when it comes to ferrying objects between a planet's surface and orbit. The forces under your command will be limited by Weight, factoring in the total weight of all Mechs vs the maximum Tonnage your transportation assets - Dropships - can carry. Matches start at 200 tons -- enough for four 50-ton mechs, or two 100-ton Mechs, or one 80-ton Mech and three 40-ton Mechs, whatever combination. Upgrading your DropShip to a larger model will increase this tonnage, to a maximum of 400.

C3 Network - Command, Control & Communication

We also use yet another "resource" to determine the size of your force in the form of your C3 Network. This represents the information network between you, the Commander, and all of your Mechs, and at the start of a match you will only have enough bandwidth to control a lance (squad) of four Mechs. You can build C3 Network Outposts at Beacons to increase this number by four up to two times, allowing for a total maximum of 12 Mechs that you can directly control. If you should lose a C3 Outpost, any Mechs that you lose the ability to control will simply hold position until control can be reestablished. They will engage enemies they detect but you will not be able to control them until you build another C3 Outpost, at which point they will again rejoin your command structure.

Ultimately, you can control only as many Mechs as your C3 and weight limits allow. This could mean four 100-ton Mechs, or twelve 30-ton Mechs.