11 replies to this topic

[Lightfoot]

I get an idea for a Summoner loadout which is light weight and should work, but there is not enough tonnage left. Summoner can do no more than some medium lasers and a ballistic or missile weapon which makes it a 50 ton medium mech load-out with the movement characteristics and target profile of a heavy mech.

So it is likely to just sit forever in the mechbay unless I feel like causing my team to lose since the ELO thinks it is a heavy mech. Fixed Jump-Jets plus fixed ST Internals don't seem to work well with your Clan balancing.

[Summon3r]

Lightfoot, on 21 July 2014 - 04:50 AM, said:

I get an idea for a Summoner loadout which is light weight and should work, but there is not enough tonnage left. Summoner can do no more than some medium lasers and a ballistic or missile weapon which makes it a 50 ton medium mech load-out with the movement characteristics and target profile of a heavy mech.

So it is likely to just sit forever in the mechbay unless I feel like causing my team to lose since the ELO thinks it is a heavy mech. Fixed Jump-Jets plus fixed ST Internals don't seem to work well with your Clan balancing.

actually there are many extremely effective builds for the Summoner, what has really really caused it to take a back seat to everything now is the massive knee jerk reaction JJ nerfing that just happened. one of Summoners best weapons was maneuverability to help with its fairly limited loadout options.

ive no problem scoring 600-900pt games but this mech is by no means a lead the charge front line exchange punches mech. especially now that it can hardly get off the ground with a whopping 5 JJ :-/

[BARBAR0SSA]

Odd, I just ran it and had no issues getting 900 dmg.

You can do an SRM brawl build with LBX/UACs

Energy build, Guass+PPC etc etc.

If they ever allow JJs to give you forward thrust like in MW2 it would help a lot, I really think they should improve how much mobility they allow but at increased recharge.

[Lightfoot]

There is not much I need JJets for until they add DFA's or something. The MWO faithful have had such a meltdown over JJets in this game they are ruined now and even before. I rarely see JJetters and in the videos all I see is players using them for deflection to mess up player's aim or hill camping and neither of those things are really a challenge to experienced players. Especially at MWO's level of JJet capability, which actually makes the mech easier to hit.

I just compare the Summoner to other Heavy mechs and there is no comparison. You have to look at medium mechs like the Hunchback and Dragon to find anything remotely similar. And the Clan Hunchback IIc would blow the Summoner away.

Anyway, it would be no big deal to make the Summoner's JJets removable due to all the other restrictions PGI has added to the Clan Mechlab. That preserves most of the lore about the Summoner and it's still not that powerful of a mech. Simple things like this should be fixed quickly before the Summoner gets a bad reputation and no one will buy it. It should be one of the top Clan mechs in popularity.

[Kibble]

I love my summoner just as much as my stormcrow.

I mainly use the ppc+gauss however I have been toying around with an LRM 15 with 2x Llas and 2x Mlas. So far it's pretty good but not nearly as effective as ppc+gauss.

[STEF_]

I really love my 3 summoners, maneuverability is the key.
I managed to master it in relative short time, although my configs aren't so "complicated".
1) ultra20 + 4 er-ml
2) 2pll+2pml+streak6
3) 5 streak6, bap.
But really you must have one eye on the screen and one eye on the map, and run, cover, push, regroup... in a single word: maneuverability

[Summon3r]

Lightfoot, on 21 July 2014 - 12:07 PM, said:

There is not much I need JJets for until they add DFA's or something. The MWO faithful have had such a meltdown over JJets in this game they are ruined now and even before. I rarely see JJetters and in the videos all I see is players using them for deflection to mess up player's aim or hill camping and neither of those things are really a challenge to experienced players. Especially at MWO's level of JJet capability, which actually makes the mech easier to hit.

I just compare the Summoner to other Heavy mechs and there is no comparison. You have to look at medium mechs like the Hunchback and Dragon to find anything remotely similar. And the Clan Hunchback IIc would blow the Summoner away.

Anyway, it would be no big deal to make the Summoner's JJets removable due to all the other restrictions PGI has added to the Clan Mechlab. That preserves most of the lore about the Summoner and it's still not that powerful of a mech. Simple things like this should be fixed quickly before the Summoner gets a bad reputation and no one will buy it. It should be one of the top Clan mechs in popularity.

umm dragon is a heavy

and i would love to see a hunch IIC blow away a Summoner, first off uac20x2 the mech would never catch the summoner and secondly would have next to no armor.

Edited by Summon3r, 21 July 2014 - 03:36 PM.

[MonkeyCheese]

It could use some performance tweaks to distance itself from the timberwolf but I love my summoners anyway and they seem to work fine

My builds seem perfectly fine

• Prime is running lb20xAC, 2ERML, Dual AMS
  
• B is running 4 SRM6, LRM15, 1MG, Dual AMS
  
• My D is currently running 2 SRM6, 2ERLL, LRM10, Dual AMS but the D also works really well as a stock mech with 2ERLL 2ERML or with the pulse variants.

Dual AMS and sticking with other team members and not going solo seems to be the key to my success with this mech.

[Vanguard319]

Lightfoot, on 21 July 2014 - 12:07 PM, said:

There is not much I need JJets for until they add DFA's or something. The MWO faithful have had such a meltdown over JJets in this game they are ruined now and even before. I rarely see JJetters and in the videos all I see is players using them for deflection to mess up player's aim or hill camping and neither of those things are really a challenge to experienced players. Especially at MWO's level of JJet capability, which actually makes the mech easier to hit.

I just compare the Summoner to other Heavy mechs and there is no comparison. You have to look at medium mechs like the Hunchback and Dragon to find anything remotely similar. And the Clan Hunchback IIc would blow the Summoner away.

Anyway, it would be no big deal to make the Summoner's JJets removable due to all the other restrictions PGI has added to the Clan Mechlab. That preserves most of the lore about the Summoner and it's still not that powerful of a mech. Simple things like this should be fixed quickly before the Summoner gets a bad reputation and no one will buy it. It should be one of the top Clan mechs in popularity.

I'm going to call BS on what I bolded. You're forgetting that a Hunchback IIC has paper thin armor, much thinner than the Summoner in fact. It's also only lethal at close range, whereas most Summoner builds are optimized for long range engagement. The only way a Summoner would lose to one in a straight out 1v1 engagement is if the Summoner pilot was inept.

That being said, there are far better solutions to fixing JJs and discouraging poptarting than nerfing them into glorified lit farts. For example, the TT rules have targeting rules that make it difficult to not only hit a moving target, but also makes it less likely to hit a target when you are running and jumping. These rules have never been implemented in any Mechwarrior game.

Here's a clip from Mechwarrior 3:

This is how Jump Jets should be. The problem is the pinpoint accuracy of the player right? Well, if the TT rules for to-hit modifiers were in effect, he wouldn't be anywhere near as accurate as he was. According to TT's Attack modifier tables, he would have no less than a +10 to-hit modifier on his mech, (+2 running, +3 jumping, +1 assuming the Annihilators were running at top speed, +4 for attacking at long range, and possibly a +1 from light heat build up) equivalent to an 83~92% chance of missing with his shots, he shouldn't have been able to hit anything. Most of the problems with pinpoint weaponry stem from the fact that these rules were never translated into the PC games, and as technology got better, and mouse tracking got more precise, this fatal flaw became more pronounced.


It's pretty obvious what the solution is: You're not fixing the game by nerfing functions that on their own were not necessarily broken because you ignored the one game mechanic from TT that balanced it out and made everything work. This is why we need a reticule bloom system more complex than that ****** reticule shake that didn't fix anything.

How I would implement it:

• All mechs would have a reticule that has an FPS-style bloom when the mech is moving, as movement speed increases, so too does the the reticule bloom, making your shots less accurate, this movement penalty would not exceed 17%.
  
• The rate would be determined by the throttle % rather than the actual speed of the mech, this is so that lighter mechs can still have a chance of hitting their targets when running at speed.
  
• Jumping would retain the shake when JJs are on, but the reticule would very quickly bloom to the equivalent of a 25% to-hit penalty while the mech is falling. This would allow poptarting to remain a possible tactic, but kill it as a meta strategy.
  
• Accuracy penalties would also come into effect as heat increases, ranging from 8% for low heat, up to 33% for critical heat.
  
• Mech damage would also affect accuracy, sensor damage 16% per sensor, upper/lower arm actuators 8% per actuator lost, shoulder actuator 33%
  
• All targeting computers would reduce reticule bloom by 8%.
  
• In addition these penalties would stack. (i.e. running + jumping + low heat = 50% penalty)

This would probably do more to balance the game than anything PGI has tried so far. You would see fewer poptarts because you would actually need to be very skilled to reliably hit anything, and even then you would be unable to reliably core ppl like we're seeing now, light mechs, especially jumping lights wouldn't be the demonic spiders they are because they wouldn't be as accurate with pinpoint weapons at 170 kph. High heat high dmg builds would be playable, but they wouldn't be quite as effective as they are now unless the pilot is willing to cool down in between firing, forcing the pilot to choose between lowering their dps, or lowering their accuracy. We could then have JJs that are closer to canon, allowing highly mobile mechs like the Summoner to actually be mobile.

Edited by Vanguard319, 21 July 2014 - 08:31 PM.

[Lightfoot]

Okay, I mastered the Prime and ran it for a few days and I still have not changed my opinion that the Summoner should not have both fixed ST Internals and fixed Jump-Jets.

The MWO Clan Mechlab is not canon and the restrictions are not canon because either you have an open Mechlab in Battletech or you don't. MWO gives the Inner Sphere an open Mechlab, allowing all changes and the Clan Mechlab is closed, essentially, only allowing Omnipod switches. That's okay, but some added flexibility or rules need to be added. Probably no fixed jump-jets on any mech since this would allow trading of one advantage for another. Or it could be only two fixed equipment elements, but this would be harder to balance.

Anyway, when I ask other Summoner pilots in-game how they like the Summoner, they say it's junk and usually that they have mastered it. I find it challenging and I have had a few good games in the Summoner, but it doesn't carry a heavy mech loadout. Nothing like the Jagermech or Cataphract. Beyond the jump-jets it doesn't move better than the Mad Cat except for the extra torso twist. The Summoner also is not tougher or harder to hit than other heavy mechs to make up for it's low payload capability.

For balance these issues should be resolved in some way.

[Grendel408]

shad0w4life, on 21 July 2014 - 07:48 AM, said:

If they ever allow JJs to give you forward thrust like in MW2 it would help a lot, I really think they should improve how much mobility they allow but at increased recharge.

Want some forward thrust with JJs? Take 1 or 2 steps forward and trigger your JJs... same for moving backwards with JJs. Seems the JJs work with momentum in MWO (which is somewhat realistic, right?)... faster you move the faster you fly

[Summon3r]

Lightfoot, on 28 July 2014 - 11:00 AM, said:

Okay, I mastered the Prime and ran it for a few days and I still have not changed my opinion that the Summoner should not have both fixed ST Internals and fixed Jump-Jets.

Beyond the jump-jets it doesn't move better than the Mad Cat except for the extra torso twist. The Summoner also is not tougher or harder to hit than other heavy mechs to make up for it's low payload capability.

the JJ nerf has effectively castrated the Summoners main edge in combat mobility, that said i still love the mech and have many team mates that love the mech. it needs a mobility increase period.