chis

The forum is always full of people with ideas of "this item needs improved," or "this item is too op," or countless half-baked hair-brained "wouldn't it be awesome to have super-ultra amazing new item X." The game's most needed improvements are in areas that are less sexy and exciting. I'd really like to see more talk about these aspects of the game that do not determine whose mech is going to win in a given battle. If you haven't been around for years and years, eating, sleeping, and drinking supermechs with an intimate knowledge of who all the clans are that matter and who is in each of them, choosing a clan can be painful. I wish you could click on clans that you can potentially join and view some basic information. What language are they speaking in there? How many of the x/y players in the clan have been logged on in the last 24 hours? One can see if a clan has, for example, 650 wins so far this week in arena--but how many of those wins come from one player who won't be able to maintain such a level of intensity week over week? Am I going to be the lowest ranked person in the clan, therefore increasing the probability that I will be deemed expendable? Yes, these are all issues I've dealt with. I've joined a clan and been the only one speaking English. I've joined clans where the limited info I could see looked good, but most of the players turned out to be inactive. I've joined and seen that 500+ arena wins out of 600 or so came from one individual player who then never repeated such a makes-my-eyes-go-bloodshot-to-think-about endeavor, and the total clan wins in following weeks were paltry. Improving players' ability to research clans and make more informed selections would be a massive improvement. The communications system within SuperMechs is, and please understand I actually like this game, awful. Sometimes, if I've got extra time to kill, I'm out of SM energy, and sick of the arena, I find myself in an unusual and rare condition where I feel like being social and might like to reach out to some players I've met in Supermechs and say "hey, wussup?" But even if they are people who I know are logged on because their SM addiction is quite heavy, the chances of contacting any individual player in-game is really poor. I know it'd be creating an entire section in the game that doesn't currently exist, but it'd be nice to be able to drop an in-game mail to other players. Ultimately, yes, this problem can be solved via third-party applications, but having something in the game to improve things and bridge the gap before having to move entirely out of the game to communicate with people would be nice. The game needs better documentation. Regardless of how badly the addicted need to justify their time here, this is not a complicated game. The learning curve, however, is unnecessarily steep. Efforts by the community to fill the gap and provide information are insufficient. The truth is, SuperMechs is not popular enough to have the critical mass of active players necessary to spawn a good, helpful, worthwhile fan-based wiki on the web. I don't believe it can ever reach that mass without easy-to-find documentation available to newer players so that they can feel confident they understand the game and therefore stick with the game long enough to give it a chance. It is my view that, as much of a pain-in-the-a$$ as it may be, the devs really should put a proper effort into providing informative and accessible info for newer players. At the risk of sounding harsh, the honest truth is the the current how-to play info found in the game's settings is less than worthless. Those are a few improvements that I think SuperMechs sorely needs. Sorry if it isn't as exciting as "hey, how about a magic shovel that lets your mech dig a hole and hide while a heat bomb is thrown!" I'd quite enjoy hearing from anyone else that is like-minded and also sees the need for game improvements not involving mech equipment.

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Until an actual rule is made, the rule is whatever the person with the power wants it to be and nothing more or nothing less. Point me to the official page of rules that has been posted to all of us SM players that discusses how to change clan membership, and I'll readily and humbly admit I'm wrong. I'm not saying you haven't done it in the way you describe, but it sounds more to me like an agreement reached between several parties and a willing administrator than a rule.

If everyone had the same opportunity to access items in the game, sure, then trading would seem an enhancement. But that isn't the way the game works. The higher your level, the better your rewards. Those at the top get the lion's share of gold, tokens, and quality items. If there were trading, the very few at the very top would have total control over who advances and who is stuck in the mud. The majority of people would deem the game unjust, and it wouldn't be long before the only people left playing were the top few players and whatever good friends they have to whom they are willing to throw a bone. For trading to work in SuperMechs, the game would have to undergo such a heavy redesign that it would no longer be SuperMechs. It isn't going to happen.

It is adobe that has ended the life of Flash Player. SuperMechs used Flash Player so you could play SuperMechs in your browser. Aside from rewriting their code so that it will work in your browser without the Flash Plugin, there is nothing Tacticsoft can do. I would hope that changes are made to bring the game back to the browser. While we wait to see if that happens, I would recommend you use another platform. A mobile device works well. Personally, I run a virtual android system on top of my operating system using QEMU/KVM, and that works smoothly and flawlessly.

Yes, my name here in the forum is different than my handle within the game. But I'm nobody, Shaun. So it doesn't matter. When I first started playing SuperMechs the great challenge in clan membership was finding a clan where there were more than one or two active players. When my mechs got good enough to get into some clans that had mostly active players, I found it was impossible to retain membership within them. The clans set rules that had to be followed, which is fair enough, but even if I busted my a$$ and met every requirement, there was no loyalty to the clan members. 100 wins in arena, 100 titan tickets, log on every day--whatever the rules, I'd do them all. But what all the clans do is they keep one or two spots open. The second someone of a higher rank joins, whoever is at the bottom of the list gets the axe. It doesn't matter if they made all the quotas or if they had to pull a few late nights to do it. The leader wants their clan to be as strong as possible so the players with the weaker mechs get trimmed every time they get a chance. So even if I did twice the quotas, when the clan managed to recruit enough stronger players, I'd see my mech fall to the bottom of the list. It then didn't come as any great surprise when I'd log on the next day and see that I'd been cut from the clan. What the clan leaders who follow this method (pretty much all of them) don't understand is that they get the same loyalty from the clan members as they give to them. So each time an individual clan member evolves to become eligible for a stronger clan--particularly if it is a clan with a reputation and a recognizable name--they jump ship and move to what they believe are greener pastures. In the short term, the practice of brutally cutting the members who made you gives a bit of a boost, but it doesn't take long before the clan hits a ceiling and cannot catch those bigger clans because any player advancement that would move them toward that means those same players are going to leave to join the competition. Awakening was different. You had your rules, as you should. You had to cut people if they stopped trying or if they couldn't be on for a prolonged period of time. You'd have been less than a good leader if you didn't. But if a player in that clan met the requirements, they were completely and totally protected. Nobody ever had to worry that on the next log-on they'd find themselves clanless. It takes longer to develop and advance a clan up the charts that way, but I think it makes for a far stronger clan in the long run. Shaun did it the hard way. He did it the right way. Now, completely apathetic game administrators are happy to let that all fall apart when it is a problem with how the game functions that created the situation. If anyone is wondering why a nobody like me might leave his entrenched lurker status on the forum, sign on, and feel a little bit indignant about what is happening here in this thread, I've explained where I'm coming from as best I can. At any rate, Shaun, because you are a better leader than most I think people will follow you. I doubt anyone is going to change their minds from the administrative point of view, if for no other reason than they've said no already and as humans they will further dig into their position in preference to admitting they are wrong about it. We all do it so we shouldn't expect any different from them. My advice is to have Doc or whoever it is to who you wanted to transfer leadership start a new clan. The people who are worth having will follow if you tell them where to go in advance. The rest will cull themselves so you don't have to worry about feeling guilty as you lose the dead weight.

Shaun, I do hope they do the right thing on this and either restore your clan leadership to you or to your chosen successor. There are sayings out there that most people have heard, some of which promote a strong misunderstanding of how laws and the value system of the modern world works. One of them is "Possession is 9/10ths of the law." What the uneducated masses who quote such drivel fail to understand is the roots of that saying go to the concept of adverse possession, or, in layman's terms, squatters rights, and that the actual legal focus is on the work invested, not in momentary possession. If you make an investment into something and work hard to improve it, and have done so for a meaningful length of time, the law in most places would recognize that it is the labor invested more than anything else that determines who is the true owner. If the clown that has had ownership of your clan fall upon him had spent years working on it, then I could see where an argument could be made that ownership is not clear. But that is not the situation. It is you who has spent the time and effort making your clan great. If this were a legal matter, there isn't a court in the modern world who wouldn't give you your clan back. Somebody doesn't get to own your car or house simply because they are in it, or even if they gain possession of the deeds. There are processes that must be followed. Transfer of ownership must be an intentional undertaking and not done under duress. Taking advantage of others or resorting to crime is not recognized as a valid way to establish oneself. But this isn't a legal matter. This is SuperMechs, and the powers-that-be of Supermechs have total jurisdiction on the matter. How they handle this sort of thing tells us what sort of people they are and what sort of game they want SuperMechs to be. Having run various sorts of servers in my time--websites and PBXes to name a couple--I'd be proper shocked if there aren't logs that clearly verify what is what in this situation. Servers, by default, tend to log everything. If for some reason such logs are not available, as a former member of Shaun's clan I would be happy to stand up and say "Yes, Shaun was undoubtedly the leader of that clan both in the official title and in how he related to the clan members. He was an excellent leader and I do not believe that clan could be what it is today if it were not for his leadership of it."

This really caught me quite funny. Look, I understand SuperMechs is a rather shallow game with extraordinarily limited content--and I say this as someone who quite enjoys the game and spends a fair amount of time with it--but I don't know that it should be following the Eve Online model where the game itself isn't the game, rather, it's all the outside and usually underhanded dealings between the players that create the content for which people come. Who are we kidding here? We know exactly who the true owner of the clan was. It was ShaunTheSheep. He says that his intention was to put someone specific in charge of the clan and any honest, rational assessment of the situation would indicate it is a shortcoming in the game's mechanics that created the problem. A rational response would be to set it right. Shaun led his clan for the last year and a half. He built it up to be a clan in which most players in this game would aspire to have membership. Now that it is doing well, he goes to hand off the returns of his effort to someone of his choosing and a shortcoming in the game's mechanics messes that up. In good faith he approaches the administrators of the game and explains a situation that is clear and easily verifiable. The response is "Figuring out who truly truly truly owns a clan isn't really realistic..." I don't buy it. I'm certain that, like most other people on planet earth, the game's administrators see themselves as busy people. If the response was "Look, I've got a lot on my plate and this just doesn't rate high enough to warrant my time," while I'd still be bothered by the response it would at least feel honest. It is entirely realistic to know that Shaun owned his clan and his leadership transfer did not happen correctly. I enjoy the game, but I sure as heck don't expect much out of it. This is a fringe game with a relatively tiny following for a reason.