43 replies to this topic

[guardiandashi]

a flamer has a range of ~90 meters the same as a machine gun.

the flamer is a giant flame thrower

what more do you need to know?

[Helmer]

MaddMaxx, on 20 March 2012 - 03:08 PM, said:

Like these perhaps.

Flamers

guardiandashi, on 20 March 2012 - 03:09 PM, said:

a flamer has a range of ~90 meters the same as a machine gun.

the flamer is a giant flame thrower

what more do you need to know?

HUSH. Do you want screenshots or not?!?!

Edited by Helmer, 20 March 2012 - 04:22 PM.

[Artesian]

Hawkeye 72, on 20 March 2012 - 01:35 PM, said:

It hasn't been done in the video games probably because proper implementation would be difficult without it feeling cheesy or out of place.

The Crescent Hawk's Inception had at least one type of physical attack, the lucky kick saved Jason Youngblood more than once for me.

Edited by Artesian, 20 March 2012 - 06:03 PM.

[NameTheftVictim]

Mellowbloom, on 20 March 2012 - 12:57 PM, said:

I saw it, it still looks incredibly silly to me
I'm aware it exists, it's just, as an outsider to the series, it both looks and seems highly strange.
I mean, you don't see tanks with knife-arms.

I actually agree with you. Most of my exposure to BattleTech while growing up came from MechWarrior, specifically MechWarrior 2, with its non-anthropormorphic Clan 'mechs. The idea of 'mechs melee attacking each other with any means other than ramming seems weird to me, too.

[soulfire]

There are times when your out of weapons i could see you helping a team mate by rushing in and knocking an enemy onto their backs leaving most mechs helpless. Axeman and Hatchetmen had physical attacks. Wish I could post picture I have of an atlas raming his fist through the cockpit of another mech. Most computer games though seem to have great deal of trouble with physical attacks when the opponets are online players because of all the variables and lag of each player. If I throw a punch to hit a specific area on an enemy I have 120ms lag he has 640 ms game just going to estimate. In tank game I have watched tanks suddenly move 5 feet or so in game over sideways while moving forward this tells me that players connection to game prob dipped suddenly so game estimated his travel until his connection came back up again where the game corrected his position. Old cheat in quake was to very your output speed compared to your input. you see the game normally but everyone sees your char. lagging and hard to hit.

[Fetladral]

Mellowbloom, on 20 March 2012 - 12:57 PM, said:

I saw it, it still looks incredibly silly to me
I'm aware it exists, it's just, as an outsider to the series, it both looks and seems highly strange.
I mean, you don't see tanks with knife-arms.

Didn't you ever watch gundam when you were younger? so much melee in there it gets annoying after awhile. especially since they are fighting in space over those distances melee seems somewhat idiotic.

[Sheewa]

1. Hard to implement.
2. Does it worth it? Running with a big gun is much better.

[Christopher Dayson]

Mech's are moving much much much slower than any gundam ever did. They're whole different beasts. At least in comparison between BattleTech and almost any super robot anime.

This also means that mechs are going to be in close range for longer stretches of time in general. Especially in urban city combat which happened quite a bit in a few of the succession wars.

If you're stuck face to face would you rather have to punch a few times and hope to hit the head/cockpit more than once, or would you prefer to have a weapon that lets you put the mass of your mech into play more effectively? I know which I'd pick.

As soon as the realization is met that these mechs are generally only going to hit 140 kmh at /max/ for the smallest ones... physical combat becomes a lot more interesting and useful.

[Murphy Skjebnesvanger]

I'm sorry, but a lot of what I'm hearing is, "melee was never in the other Mechwarrior games, and it seems weird to me, so I don't like it. I just want the biggest gun possible. When would I ever have need of melee in my 'mech?" Well, I can tell you of many times I wish I could of had at least one retractable blade on my 'mech, or hell even the ability to punch. If you did hit a 'mech like this, do you think the 'mech would just sit and have no reaction to getting smacked? It would send them railing back, or at least stagger them, which would give you enough time to recover and hit them with another weapon, or give you the chance to get the heck out of there if needed. I know it would probably be hard to implement, but it would make things a bit more interesting. It's another one of those things that, I don't expect to be included in early game, but maybe later on down the road. Melee for MW:O doesn't have to be on the grand scale and over the top as gundam, but even simple melee could spice things up a bit....
*phew* there, I'm done.... I feel better now...

Edited by Murphy Skjebnesvanger, 24 March 2012 - 01:52 PM.

[Sheewa]

From a physical point of view melee mech combat is not as effective as you think. For the heavily armored mech, you need to make great power to penetrate that armor. From school physics course, we know that power - it is a multiplication of force to acceleration. With the weight there is no problem, but to get a sufficient acceleration with a hand / tentacle / leg / head should be set a very strong hydraulic actuators (for the efficient movement of large masses of the mech parts), but they have almost zero acceleration.
In general - you can only break into a purely "naked" place of mech, while you will be watered by flame-throwers and getting fire from the AC.
From the sight of the gameplay i dont think it will be fun. It will look more like hugging not "THE AWESOME JAPANEESE ROBOTS FIGHTING". That melee mech class will be more likely called kamikaze.
sry for my english

[GrimFist]

A few things here:

I love the Hatchetman 5S - I played the orginal plus the others.

Death from above sounds like a possibility? If I was to land my cataplut on top of an Atlas that overheated and was shutdown I should be able to have some fun right? Or can I just take my Atlas andif by chance that Jenner rounds a corner trying to scout and rams into my right leg, I would expect the jenner to suffer. Even more so if the jenner mechwarrior was afk and I rammed him with my Atlas? Right..

Guns are great, I'll use them.

I dont wish to see any imbalance in game play.

[Ian MacLeary]

Sheewa, on 24 March 2012 - 02:13 PM, said:

From a physical point of view melee mech combat is not as effective as you think. For the heavily armored mech, you need to make great power to penetrate that armor. From school physics course, we know that power - it is a multiplication of force to acceleration. With the weight there is no problem, but to get a sufficient acceleration with a hand / tentacle / leg / head should be set a very strong hydraulic actuators (for the efficient movement of large masses of the mech parts), but they have almost zero acceleration.
In general - you can only break into a purely "naked" place of mech, while you will be watered by flame-throwers and getting fire from the AC.

Armor in the BattleTech Universe is ablative and frangible. It's designed to melt when hit with energy weapons (dissipating the energy) and to fracture when hit with impact/explosive weapons, including melee attacks. It's not like modern Chobham armor on main battle tanks. In other words, you don't need to penetrate it each time you hit - a 'mechs armor can be slowly worn down.

In the tabletop game, a punch from an Atlas hits like an AC/10. A kick, like an AC/20. Punches hit in upper-body locations only and have a 6x greater chance to hit the head than regular weapons fire. Kicks hit exclusively in the legs, which means kicking an enemy light or medium in an assault 'mech tends to leave them hopping around if you connect.

A 'mech using an axe/hatchet doubles their punch damage to a single location.

[Sheewa]

Back when i was a kid, my parents could not afford any good factory-made table games. They were so dam expensive here in 1990's. So i made a lot by myself. It was fun. Writing a tabletop rules is much easier than scripting and animating ingame models. And making to look such activities awesome is much more harder. It will take a lot of human hours to do that punchin' smashin' dfa and other stuff. Does it worth it? i'll better be getting 5 extra mechs and maps instead. More balanced and focused gameplay about weaponry.
But well, it doesn't mean i hate this idea. I like it. But i think it's time for other goodies to go atm.

[Grithis]

Mellowbloom, on 20 March 2012 - 12:57 PM, said:

I saw it, it still looks incredibly silly to me
I'm aware it exists, it's just, as an outsider to the series, it both looks and seems highly strange.
I mean, you don't see tanks with knife-arms.

If you're piloting something like an Archer, and run out of ammo, should you be forced to sit there and watch as a Hunchback strips tons of armor from your mech with it's AC20? Should you have no other option but to plink away impotently with your 2 medium lasers, doing next to nothing to the mech 20 tons lighter than you?

Melee combat, at some point, becomes a viable option. You can't tell me that a modern day tank crew that finds itself behind enemy lines and out of ammo, or with a damaged cannon, would sooner surrender than resort to ramming their way through an obstacle. If you're in a gunfight, and your clip runs dry, are you going to try and outrun your enemies bullets? Are you going to surrender and hope he treats you nicely? Are you going to look for an opportunity to hit him with something satisfyingly heavy? What sounds realistic?

I'm desperately hoping they find a balanced way to put melee combat, (other than charging and DFA), into the game. I don't even know if I would ever use it, but I'd like the option if it ever came up.

[NARCoMAN]

I guess I can see where melee combat could be useful, but I do have a counter argument to simply throwing a kick...A dance in the flames by FlyingDebris:

FIRE BURN FIRE BURN FIRE FIRE BURN

[Grithis]

Sheewa, on 24 March 2012 - 02:13 PM, said:

From a physical point of view melee mech combat is not as effective as you think. For the heavily armored mech, you need to make great power to penetrate that armor. From school physics course, we know that power - it is a multiplication of force to acceleration. With the weight there is no problem, but to get a sufficient acceleration with a hand / tentacle / leg / head should be set a very strong hydraulic actuators (for the efficient movement of large masses of the mech parts), but they have almost zero acceleration.
In general - you can only break into a purely "naked" place of mech, while you will be watered by flame-throwers and getting fire from the AC.
From the sight of the gameplay i dont think it will be fun. It will look more like hugging not "THE AWESOME JAPANEESE ROBOTS FIGHTING". That melee mech class will be more likely called kamikaze.
sry for my english

No hydraulics. http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Myomer Think of the muscle-wire technology we have today, perfected. Electrical currents causing synthetic muscle to bunch and move much like it does in the human body.

Not saying that mechs should move like Gundams, or anything. Newtons' Laws still apply. Just clarifying that these things can, in fact, pull off a snap movement better than the average hydraulic backhoe, or something.

Edited by Grithis, 26 March 2012 - 09:10 AM.

[Sarriss]

Helmer, on 20 March 2012 - 03:04 PM, said:

?Do you like movies about Galdiators Timmy? Do you have a Swiss Bank account? Do you like money?

Airplane! reference - Nice.

Also does anyone think about this with melee:


Just remove kids and insert giant robots and you will start to understand why melee is going to be a work in progress.

[Togg Bott]

ok... for those who are screaming no melee.... here is what happens when your light,med,light heavy mech comes screaming around the corner to find a assualt standing there.




and yes, i'll be in mediums/ light heavies. so i expect this will prolly happen to me on occasion.

[Sarriss]

Togg Bott, on 26 March 2012 - 09:29 AM, said:

ok... for those who are screaming no melee.... here is what happens when your light,med,light heavy mech comes screaming around the corner to find a assualt standing there.




and yes, i'll be in mediums/ light heavies. so i expect this will prolly happen to me on occasion.

That video makes you appreciate the fact they finally did away with headshots. I love big hits, but I like it when my guys still have heads by the end of the game.

[Solis Obscuri]

Mellowbloom, on 20 March 2012 - 12:50 PM, said:

In a world of giant robots fighting other giant robots with giant guns, something about a giant robot using an axe just strikes me as weirdly comical.

I want a 'mech that gets drunk and beats people to death with a bowling pin, Daniel Plainview-style.