14 replies to this topic

[NextGame]

Ok bear with me folks, this suggestion is probably a little off the wall, and im curious about what people's thoughts are on it.

When reading the various battletech books (haven't read them all, kinda got bored at a certain point) I get the impression that the biggest battlemechs are maybe 4-5 stories tall. This doesn't jive with what we see in the game as our mechs tower over very tall buildings and make the various cars and vans dotted around seem miniscule by comparison.

Now, granted, my own personal perception is not a good justification for suggesting this change in this area, but I was thinking about this in relation to MWO and my thoughts are that if battlemechs were shrunk down to say, 2/3 or even half their current size across the board, it would have the potential to change the game for the better in the following ways:

• More cover would be available to be used by all mechs
  
• It would be harder to hit enemies, particularly at longer ranges, meaning that more skill would be involved in using longer ranged weapons to deal precision damage, and in reality "sniping" would be become about doing some general damage to enemies at longer range unless the pilots were excellent.
  
• There would therefore be less reason to directly nerf weapons & mechs associated the higher damage longer range meta builds.
  
• You would see a better mixture of combat forms as more closer range weapons used/fighting as, if sized properly, those would be the route to achieve precision fire.
  
• Maps would feel a lot larger and therefore more immersive.
  
• Mechs would feel faster as they would move at the same speeds as present. Movement speed would not be scaled down.
  
• Range would not be scaled down, so longer range weapons would feel more long range than at present.
  
• Existing maps may provide additional tactical and strategic options by default of downscaling mechs.

Drawbacks

• It would be possible to make mechs too small, and make longer range weapons useless as a consequence
  
• consideration would have to be given to missile clusters, which would have to also be scaled down accordingly.
  
• Mech carcass decorations on various maps (tourmaline) would have to be scaled down as appropriate.
  
• There would invariably be some people who QQ as with everything, as there is no such thing as a change that pleases everyone.
  
• Jumpjets would need rebalanced.

Thoughts?/Alternatives?/Potato?

Edited by NextGame, 06 February 2014 - 02:47 AM.

[Mordynak]

I dont understand your thoughts as to why things being smaller would make mechs harder to hit.

If you make the mechs smaller you make everything about the mech smaller too. It just makes no sense.

[Ascheriit Davion]

I would like to see my mech as big as it should be. More accurate to the mech stat in the lore the better.....imo.

If you want to hide behind a terrain and the current map doesn't have enough, maybe a suggestion to make a more taller building or terrain in the map is better (probably gonna eat more ram....my comp can handle it) ho ho ho

[NextGame]

Mordynak, on 06 February 2014 - 04:28 AM, said:

I dont understand your thoughts as to why things being smaller would make mechs harder to hit.

If you make the mechs smaller you make everything about the mech smaller too. It just makes no sense.

Thanks for the response, my thinking is that an atlas that is x metres away would be y% smaller than it is now, and therefore individual components are also y% smaller and most likely more difficult to hit accurately.

Ascheriit Davion, on 06 February 2014 - 04:59 AM, said:

I would like to see my mech as big as it should be. More accurate to the mech stat in the lore the better.....imo.

If you want to hide behind a terrain and the current map doesn't have enough, maybe a suggestion to make a more taller building or terrain in the map is better (probably gonna eat more ram....my comp can handle it) ho ho ho

My understanding is, and I would need to go dig the quote out, and I may have read it 2nd hand from a player, so the accuracy of the statement is debateable, is that mechs in MWO are 66% larger in size than they are supposed to be in the lore.

Edited by NextGame, 06 February 2014 - 05:07 AM.

[Mordynak]

NextGame, on 06 February 2014 - 05:06 AM, said:

Thanks for the response, my thinking is that an atlas that is x metres away would be y% smaller than it is now, and therefore individual components are also y% smaller and most likely more difficult to hit accurately.

This is what I mean. If the mechs are smaller, the weapons are smaller and the cockpit view is smaller. Everything but the world objects would scale with the mechs. So to the player, the mechs would take up the same amount of space on screen, only the surrounding objects (buildings, roads, scenery) would appear bigger. Thus scaling the mechs wouldn't make it harder to hit anything at all.

Relativity and all that.

NextGame, on 06 February 2014 - 05:06 AM, said:

My understanding is, and I would need to go dig the quote out, and I may have read it 2nd hand from a player, so the accuracy of the statement is debateable, is that mechs in MWO are 66% larger in size than they are supposed to be in the lore.

I do agree with you. The mechs should represent the sizes in lore. The problem with this is the MASSIVE amount of work to do something like this this far along in development.

However, saying that. Judging from the scale of the mechs PGI chose to go with. And i mean the size within the engine, not relative to the buildings.

If they did scale down the mechs, along with the weapon ranges and such. It should make the game run better at least.

Edited by Mordynak, 06 February 2014 - 05:22 AM.

[Mechteric]

I'm not down with globally shrinking everything, there are plenty of mechs that are perfectly sized and some that are way too big (pretty much every mech >=50 and <= 60 tons)

[Strum Wealh]

NextGame, on 06 February 2014 - 02:40 AM, said:

When reading the various battletech books (haven't read them all, kinda got bored at a certain point) I get the impression that the biggest battlemechs are maybe 4-5 stories tall. This doesn't jive with what we see in the game as our mechs tower over very tall buildings and make the various cars and vans dotted around seem miniscule by comparison.

Officially, the average heights of BattleMechs in BattleTech (that is, in the novels and the tabletop game) fall within a range of 8 meters (26.25 feet) to 14 meters (45.93 feet).

For MWO, the Atlas (normally ~14 tall in BattleTech) was scaled to be~18 meters tall.
(IIRC, actual in-game height for the AS7 art asset is something like 17.6 meters).

Not all of the 'Mechs are too big; in fact, there is actually evidence that some of the 'Mechs are actually far too small (see also, here and here and here), while some others are more-or-less the correct size (see here).

If anything, a number of 'Mechs need to be made bigger, not smaller!

[Burktross]

http://mwomercs.com/...rt/page__st__40
This thread needs to be bumped. Is that allowed?

[UrsusMorologus]

The problem with making them small is you have to get right up on them to hit. Lights are already immune from weapons fire if they are moving fast enough. They would be completely immortal if they were any smaller.

IMO a balance pass would start with lights, how hard to hit moving at maximum speed, size based on that. Then work outwards to other classes from that.

Edited by UrsusMorologus, 15 October 2014 - 01:55 PM.

[0rionsbane]

I think this could be on back burner for a long while. PGI should definitely focus on more game breaking elements first like hitboxes, heat, cw etc. But this or upping the scale of the maps would help a lot of mechs out especially with the cover being so integral to this game currently. It might even help with mechs getting stuck, I notice my lighter mechs just dont get stuck on bad terrain as much as my heavys/assults and I dont think all of it is speed related.

[9erRed]

Greetings all,

I don't find the Mech's to be too off in there scale, but there is quite a bit a loss of emersion with not having many other visual identifiers for 'just how large' these Mech's are.
- Building and vehicles are not set to any scale and could be nearly any size.
- Foliage and terrain also falls into this same scale loss, just how large are some of these bush's and tree's?
- Without any 'common' visual reference, (something we know the size of) the Pilot looses the scale reference.

Looking down while in any urban location doesn't lend to any idea of just how tall these units are. Saying that the building in front of you has the third floor windows at your cockpits height could still be any height.
- One requirement, some form of environmental or industrial activity or movement. Something at the human scale that allows the Pilots to see just how tall there position sits. (like common automated forklifts moving about)
- We don't have any movement of items (and there 's lots of opportunity for this) on the locations or maps we are engaged on.

Indicated movement speeds are way off also, I've regularly operated combat vehicles that place me at about 12 feet off the ground. Not the height of these game Mech's, but moving across terrain at 30 to 60kph or faster just doesn't register that movement speed effect. (way too slow in game, the terrain should be going by a lot faster.)

Scale is only a useful reference if you have something that is known first.

9erRed

[Cyborne Elemental]

Start with Mediums.

Mediums seem to be out of proportion the most.

Then work your way up, lights seem fine, most assaults seem fine.

[TheLuc]

the resize is more for a few models tho, not all of them

[Mekwarrior]

I like your idea it would make some of the maps designed for smaller teams a bit larger for one thing.

[Psimon Drake]

I think better scale is needed between Mechs. I don't like 60 tonne mechs rendering larger than 80 tonne mechs, or even as big. (Catapult & Stalker).

Found this on-line (I like it):
http://s12.postimg.o...59571251712.jpg

My $0.02

Edited by Psimon Drake, 18 February 2015 - 01:05 PM.