54 replies to this topic

[MustrumRidcully]

Armour distribution is one of the topics not quite as often talked about, though it comes up in discussions of changing from the table top random hit location dice rolls to mouse aiming and convergence.

This poll tries to illustrate a point that probably is evident to anyone that has been part of such discussions.

I'll leave it to others to explain the concept.

EDIT:
Clarification:
This isn't a suggestion. This is not something I suggest or want. Instead, Imagine the magical mech fairy coming to you at night and asking you which of these two options you want (and she might warn you that every mech warrior gets this choice.).

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 01 October 2013 - 12:07 AM.

[G SE7EN7]

Armour is fine, its a trade off.... how it should be! One thing the devs got right.

[Cybermech]

well tbh increase in structure over armor is a much better idea.
didn't really think about but someone pointed out a few things.

trying to paste them down but not sure if I'll make good points like he did.
Atlas game play atm is to go for the torso to blow off one side then the middle, lets say the atlas pilot is a good one
Increase in structure would allow for disabling mech to become more valid then it is atm, since pure damage will do just that.
Also with lights (exclude spiders) they would become more viable, you can think your a god in one till someone can aim.

Gameplay was much better back in the day, mainly cause you could make some mistakes but it allowed more fluid game play.
It was the lag shield that allowed this to happen.
Right now with 12v12, 1 mistake can easily remove you from the field or at least reduce your ability to do anything.
I do no pilot Assaults so can't really say them but in lighter mechs this becomes vary true.
Not talking about solo'ing a whole team (which used to be very easy).
Mediums are effected by this the most, while they can be valuable and playable once you go up against someone who can aim it becomes very pointless very quickly.

I'm not making the points really valid but hope someone can.

[GalaxyBluestar]

this is just my take on things so don't hold me to it.

Problem: it's to easy to hit the CT of many mechs with such heavy hitting accuracy.

possible solution: make the CT harder to hit... how?

since homeless bill's idea would seem to be rejected by the devs, they clearly want an easier way of achieving this possible answer... okay okay here's the HOW bit.

don't increase the armour points par-se, we've already doubled them. However incoporating more of the physical CT as LT and RT and shrink the CT hitbox. hense more shots are more likely to take out side torso's and will improve the survivability. i'm awear of the reprocussions to this being xl engines becoming more dangerous so what would you think if... shoulders became arm hit boxes. and crotches {engine boxes between the legs} were not CT's at all but are split in halves, left legt and right leg hitboxes. the theory being perfect aim doesn't garrentee headshots so if CT's hitboxes were a lot smaller like heads then skill for "coring" and survivability would grow and we get more explosions for our fights instead of love taps/ alphas knocking mechs out alltogether.

any takers?

Edited by GalaxyBluestar, 29 September 2013 - 03:16 AM.

[The Boz]

Lights with 40 extra armor (which means 20 extra internal arm HP) for free?
Wat?

[stjobe]

With my roughly 20 alpha I would absolutely hate if my targets had even more armour or internal structure than they do at the moment - it already takes quite a few shots to take someone from full health to dead if you're piloting a light. Increasing armour or IS would only make piloting lights even rougher than it is, and I don't think that's needed.

So my vote goes to redesigning the hitboxes; Carrioncrows has a very good thread going on just that here.

[ArmageddonKnight]

Ignoring the fact that 20 points of extra armor on a Assualt mech and 20 points on center armor on a light mech would be totaly and completly unbalanced ..... i vote center torso.

Why?

Becouse the amount of damage flying about in MWO means u get cored very quikly. The more center armor u have, the longer u last and thus the mroe strategy and aiming/piloting skill comes into play. Unless u have a XL engine, in which case u usualy die from a side torso blow out

The whole double armor situation from the start of MWO was a mistake in the first place, u cant just double every mechs armor and think that its balanced when u have effectivly changed how high dmg low rof weapons react when hitting a mech. i.e where it once 1 or 2 shot a mech, it now takes 3 or 4 shots, not so much a problem when brawling with slow mechs, but very much so a problem trying to land those extra hits on a fast moving mech.

TBH each 'issue' MWO has connects to another one, so i could go for for an age about how MWO is broken....so ill just stop here and say yes i know there are many other issues and fixes that could help with the issue i stated above.

Edited by ArmageddonKnight, 29 September 2013 - 06:51 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

ArmageddonKnight, on 29 September 2013 - 06:51 AM, said:

Ignoring the fact that 20 points of extra armor on a Assualt mech and 20 points on center armor on a light mech would be totaly and completly unbalanced ..... i vote center torso.

Yeah, but 1 ton is also a lot more to a 35 ton mech then to a 100 ton mech. I could have used percentage values, but whatever, it doesn't really matter. This isn't a suggestion, after all, it's just an example scenario that illustrates a point.


The point being that currently there is rarely a good reason to not go for the core of the mech. Be it the CT or the side torsos if the target is known to have an XL Engine. Few people intentionally go for the arms, so raising the armor there has little benefit.

If you were to do anything about armor values, stuff like doubling armor, or doubling internals, all that doesn't change the fact.

It matters how the armour is distributed as a whole. If you want to make hit locations really crucially important and add a tactical component to choosing hit locations, the current armour ratios between sections won't do it. The end goal should be a situation where the poll above should have something like a 50:50 split (at least if we remove the 1 ton and 1 hard point cost for the extra CT armor option).

[Khobai]

I still maintain that center and side torso internal structure needs to be increased by upto 50%. Buffing internal structure instead of armor has no effect on current builds, it would make critical hits matter more, it would prevent the new 20 ton lights from getting one-shotted, it would make XL engines slightly better for assaults, and it would help alleviate the torso aiming bias by making the torso sections harder to destroy. Furthermore its very easy to do and only requires changing a modifier value from 1.0 to 1.5. There's no real reason PGI shouldnt increase torso internal structure since it bandaids several serious balance issues with their game. Granted its not an ideal fix, but it is an easy one, and one well within PGI's capability.

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It matters how the armour is distributed as a whole. If you want to make hit locations really crucially important and add a tactical component to choosing hit locations, the current armour ratios between sections won't do it. The end goal should be a situation where the poll above should have something like a 50:50 split

Even 60:40 would probably be fine. If there was a reason to shoot other locations besides torso sections at least 40% of the time, id be happy with that. But right now theres no reason to target locations other than center or side torso, unless theyre a light or fast medium, in which case you sweep the legs. I dont know if increasing torso internal structure by 50% would get us to 60:40 but certainly it would be a good first step towards that goal.

Edited by Khobai, 29 September 2013 - 07:45 AM.

[Tempered]

I don't really like the idea of changing armor. It seems fine to me the way it is. The hit boxes could use a tiny bit of tweaking on some mechs, but I don't see that as a complete fix either.

If the goal is to add longevity to the game, they could do a couple of things. They could make mechs move faster and they could add a bit of bounce to the aiming reticule while moving or they could lower damage or fire rate of weapons.

Edited by Tempered, 29 September 2013 - 07:34 AM.

[Tempered]

Out of the choices I stated above. I think the best one would be to just add a bit of bounce to the reticule. Every time one of your mechs feet hits the ground, you get reticule bounce. So if you are moving fast and thus harder to hit, then you have a harder tiime hitting as well. They could also add a bit of side to side sway from the mechs movement. Some one good at gunnery will learn to time his shots with the movement, thus skill still counts.

[Jess Hazen]

G SE7EN7, on 29 September 2013 - 02:54 AM, said:

Armour is fine, its a trade off.... how it should be! One thing the devs got right.

that's debateable, i feel as though the armour should have never been doubled. takes so much of the skill and strategy out of the game. also its weighted towards the heavier mechs where heavy armour doubles into super heavy armour; get it? weighted...

[FupDup]

Actually, the 1-ton option for more CT armor (or anywhere else) already exists in the Battletech universe: it's called Modular Armor. Basically, it's a 3070 experimental item that takes up 1 critical slot and 1 ton. In TT it adds 10 armor points to the desired location, but with doubled armor in MWO that raises it up to 20. Each location can only hold one Modular Armor piece. The TT rules also give MA a slowdown effect and physical balance penalty, but those probably wouldn't be necessary here.

http://www.sarna.net...i/Modular_Armor

Edited by FupDup, 29 September 2013 - 07:44 AM.

[Jess Hazen]

no vote

[Scratx]

Tempered, on 29 September 2013 - 07:33 AM, said:

I don't really like the idea of changing armor. It seems fine to me the way it is. The hit boxes could use a tiny bit of tweaking on some mechs, but I don't see that as a complete fix either.

If the goal is to add longevity to the game, they could do a couple of things. They could make mechs move faster and they could add a bit of bounce to the aiming reticule while moving or they could lower damage or fire rate of weapons.

Mechs moving faster only exacerbates existing problems. Mechs moving under 80kph are relatively easy to hit, which means every heavy and assault mech has to rely primarily on armor for protection from incoming fire. Making them faster isn't going to significantly change things for them. It will, however, make fast mediums and lights even more of a pain to kill.

As for adding a bounce to the aiming reticle while moving, that just means fast-moving mechs become nigh useless at fighting. It's already quite hard to lay down relatively accurate fire from a 140kph-moving mech, adding such a mechanic would make it pretty much hopeless. Which might be fun for SOME people (namely everyone in an assault, yay, lights are no longer a big threat), but would kill the viability of just about all light chassis and the Cicada.

As for tuning weapon damage or fire rate... *shrugs* they are fine for the most part already.

[Marmon Rzohr]

It depends on the mech. On some mechs I'd never sacrifice a key hardpoint. Also, some mechs are good at shouldering damage (taking hits on the arms) when torso twisting, so they might benefit more from the extra arm armor.

For example, any of the Orions has hardpoints that will go unused, just by virtue of having so many, and take a lot of CT damage, so they would benefit far more form one less ton + hardpoint and more CT armor.

[Khobai]

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I don't really like the idea of changing armor. It seems fine to me the way it is.

The problem is PGI went from a system with random hit locations to a system with perfect aiming. In TT when you fired 3 ppcs they would all hit different locations. But in MWO they all hit the same location. That amplifies the damage side of the equation greatly.

The only practical solution for balancing that equation is to increase internal structure.

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The whole double armor situation from the start of MWO was a mistake in the first place

I agree. But were stuck with it now. And unfortunately the best solution for the center torso coring problem is to pile on more armor/internal structure (I would start by increasing internal structure and increase armor only if absolutely necessary).

Edited by Khobai, 29 September 2013 - 08:08 AM.

[TB Freelancer]

ArmageddonKnight, on 29 September 2013 - 06:51 AM, said:

TBH each 'issue' MWO has connects to another one, so i could go for for an age about how MWO is broken....so ill just stop here and say yes i know there are many other issues and fixes that could help with the issue i stated above.

Its truly unfortunate that so few understand that concept.

[Lefty Lucy]

G SE7EN7, on 29 September 2013 - 02:54 AM, said:

Armour is fine, its a trade off.... how it should be! One thing the devs got right.

I don't see how the current system can be described as a trade off at all. You either run max torso armor or you have a terribly-designed mech. There really isn't a choice as you don't gain anything by *not* running max torso armor. In addition, you don't have the option to trade armor from other locations to increase torso armor, so again there is no trade off there either.

[MustrumRidcully]

Khobai, on 29 September 2013 - 07:54 AM, said:

The problem is PGI went from a system with random hit locations to a system with perfect aiming. In TT when you fired 3 ppcs they would all hit different locations. But in MWO they all hit the same location. That amplifies the damage side of the equation greatly.

That's only half of it. If hit locations were still determined by a 2d6 roll, just for a complete group fired shot instead of seperated, it wouldn't be quite as bad. But it's that as a player you have active control on where you hit. Once you gave players the ability to do this in the table top (targeting computers + pulse lasers + Clan Gunnery skill levels for example), the system broke down there, too. No one has 100 % accuracy, so people still don't always hit where they were going for - but they hit the CT still significantly more likely than the TT probabilities on which the armor values were build around suggest.

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I agree. But were stuck with it now. And unfortunately the best solution for the center torso coring problem is to pile on more armor/internal structure

The doubled armor solution is not so bad because I think our hit chances are also much higher (regardless of which hit location) then the table top would suggest. I have an accuracy of more than 75 % with my AC/20 (low figure, I am going by more, I think it was more). And speaking of AC/20 - a single lucky or unlucky hit to the head would kill anyone, and lights would be legged rapidly. if people complain the game is too fast now, it would be madness with that game. And this isn't about the increased DPS we have in MW:O thanks to the change in rate of fire. This is pure "single-shot" or "alpha" damage potential, which is independent of ROF.

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(I would start by increasing internal structure and increase armor only if absolutely necessary).

Relying on internal structure would allow simply slapping on extra armor to individual hit locations without having to worry about how to translate stock mechs. Just determine how much extra structure by weight class, figure out how you want to distribute it, and apply. So if you go for 2 extra point to CT per 5 tons and 1 extra point per side torso and leg per 5 tons, you would have something you could everywhere without needing to come up with a new armor points per ton or new max armor values.

An alternative to start could be:

• 50 % of extra armor points.
  
• Max armor points per mech: +50 %
  
• Max armor points per hit location: +100 %.

That means that you cannot possibly fully armour all locations, but gives us some freedom on how to distribute armour. Now, people will first start maxing out CT armour. Everyone sees that the CT is now the hardest part of a mech to crush, and it becomes more effective disarming or legging mechs. WIth less shots going for the CT now, people will start to experiment, lower the CT armour to buff side armos, legs or even arms, and see what will give them the best result.

Maybe there will eventually be found the perfect balance point, maybe it will be in constant shift. If the devs figure out that there is a trend, they can start changing the max armour points per hit locations to values that are closer to the trend (that would help avoiding noobs running "armor trap builds" - e.g. overarmouring their CT or overarmouring their arms or something like that.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 29 September 2013 - 09:14 AM.