160 replies to this topic

[Chou Senwan]

TL;DR - More jump jets should add limited strafing, since that's consistent with tabletop. And I think it would be more fun and provide more tactics.



I get that by canon, jump jets took up more tonnage than they have in this game before today's patch. But they also gave you a lot better maneuverability.

Before this patch they were only good for ballistic launching, not aerial maneuvers. I appreciated the skill required to get much use out of them, but they were hardly 'powerful' from a game balance perspective. You couldn't even aim your path after you launched, which I feel should be physically possible.



In table top, with 5 jump jets you can go from a standing stop facing one way and jump 150 meters onto a 30 meter high hill and land facing the other direction. If anything, we should have added functionality, not taken it away.


Proposed Tweak
What I'd love to see is tiers of maneuverability.

• 1 Jump Jet - Crappier than pre-patch. 3 seconds of ballistic vertical lift, going fast enough to get you 12 meters off the ground and still have a smidge to feather the landing. It's only really useful for hopscotching over pits and such.
  
• 2 Jump Jets - Same as pre-patch. 6 seconds of ballistic vertical lift, going fast enough to get you 20 meters off the ground. You can jump over Atlases.
  
• 3 Jump Jets - Pre-patch, plus limited strafing. Still 6 seconds, still 20 meters. Also, you can strafe sideways or forwards or backwards while jumping - maybe by by pressing Shift and a direction. Strafing uses fuel to propel you some way other than up, so you trade elevation for distance. For the sake of not having cartoon physics, you should probably only be able to strafe about 6 meters in either direction, but that's still handy if you're in the middle of River City and want to hop up and glide to the top of a building.
  
• 4 Jump Jets - Better strafing. As above, with a max of 24 meters, and a lateral max of 12 meters.
  
• 5 Jump Jets - Even Better Strafing. Vertical 30 meters, lateral 18 meters.
  
• 6+ Jump Jets - Hovering. The Spider is going to be offensively weak, so it needs some trick to make it work playing over a Jenner. What if they could stay in the air longer than 6 seconds? The mech might have an 'altitude limit,' where it won't let the pilot get above, say, 50 meters, but it gives it time to snipe from on high. In exchange, it's a very visible target. As usual, if you're moving before you jump you maintain momentum, but it falls off quickly, so even if you have 8 jump jets and are airborne for 12 seconds, you'll not be 'flying,' but rather 'hovering.'

If you make multiple jump jets more useful, it will entice people to attach the canonical number to their mechs.


So a Jenner with 2 Jump Jets could run at top speed then get 6 seconds of air time. He starts at 140kph, and his speed falls off in mid air, but eventually he traverses about 150 meters. Just like how it was pre-patch. He probably doesn't get any higher than about 20 meters, so he can get over enemy mechs and onto low buildings.

If another Jenner had 5 Jump Jets, during the same jump he can ascend up to 30 meters and be able to drift 18 meters laterally. If he doesn't want to get elevation he could just punch the thrust forward and be able to jump 168 meters instead of 150. If he's trying to Death from Above someone he can actually aim on his way there.

What do you think?

(No, we don't need these:)

Edited by Chou Senwan, 18 December 2012 - 07:57 PM.

[Chemie]

2-3 JJ should give the pre-patch lift.

5 does not even come close right now.

Do these guys even test these things? I mean, put 5 JJ in a jenner and push space. In 1 min you can tell the programmer to up the jump thrust....and you do this before release the patch.

Edited by Chemie, 18 December 2012 - 08:14 PM.

[Kunae]

Chemie, on 18 December 2012 - 08:05 PM, said:

2-3 JJ should give the pre-patch lift.

5 does not even come close right now.

Do these guys even test these things? I mean, put 5 JJ in a jenner and push space. In 1 min you can tell the programmer to up the jump thrust....

One minute? How bout 5 seconds.

[warp103]

Chemie, on 18 December 2012 - 08:05 PM, said:

2-3 JJ should give the pre-patch lift.

5 does not even come close right now.

Do these guys even test these things? I mean, put 5 JJ in a jenner and push space. In 1 min you can tell the programmer to up the jump thrust....and you do this before release the patch.

5 secs and no they do not test at all. they did in closed now just push the crapp out

[astinius]

At five jump jets i feel as if they are half as useful as before.A player should not be able to benefit from being effective from only deploying 1 or 2 jump jets, but this patch has more or less rendered jump jets a 2.5 waste of tons

[Fooooo]

Dagger6T6, on 18 December 2012 - 05:01 PM, said:

well even at maximum available jump capacity... which is what we supposedly had pre-patch with just one jet... the trajectory of jumping has changed.

when moving forward the jump takeoff trajectory is slightly more shallow, so to jump onto something you need to start your jump sooner than you are used to.

If you read the notes again you will see that they mention that the trajectory etc may be different now than before, and that they will be tweaking it etc etc.

Not sure exactly the reason for this other than they wanted to try it out etc.........(not a bad thing imo), or it was just a by-product of something they had to do to fix the jets.

Edited by Fooooo, 18 December 2012 - 09:52 PM.

[Adrienne Vorton]

most mechs (yes, in the evil canon) have at least 4 or 5 jumpjets (or maximum same ammount as walking speed ((2/3 of max speed)) only a few have just 2 or so, but mainly for a "little jump capacity"

so i wouldn´t be surprised if you need at least 4 JJ´s to use them effectively, especially on higher speeds... to be honest, i was prepared for that and "tried" to use a minimum of 4 JJ´s in my cat and jenner builds...

but i guess i´ll have to test them now for myself...

Edited by Adrienne Vorton, 18 December 2012 - 10:10 PM.

[ICEFANG13]

I ran 5 and they seemed a little worse than one on my Jenner. Not really worth it I think. Better to get a Raven-3L and ECM over Jenner-D and JJs.

[Elddric]

I have run tests also. I'm sorry but the tweak that was made to JJ is not making me happy. I figured that if a jenner could reach the heights it was getting with max setting prepatch. 5 JJ should get close to that post patch. Its not even close.

Also You put buildings with roofs on them and designed the maps so that we can hop from building to building... Hard to do that when you cant get on the buildings.

also with more JJ the amount of Thrust should increase to provide a faster take off not just height increase... It didn't feel like it but I will run more tests to verify....


Please adjust it.

[ArchMage Sparrowhawk]

Fooooo, on 18 December 2012 - 09:51 PM, said:

If you read the notes again you will see that they mention that the trajectory etc may be different now than before, and that they will be tweaking it etc etc.

Not sure exactly the reason for this other than they wanted to try it out etc.........(not a bad thing imo), or it was just a by-product of something they had to do to fix the jets.

they need to do more than "tweak", they made the JJs almost useless for anything except course correction. They need to fix. Fix them. My favorite mech is a RVN4x with 2 JJs and an ac5. Being able to jump over an atlas and swoop down from all directions has made the game worth it. I was expecting a 4 jet limit, or something like that, but finer control to allow for things like DFA. But this is like they hamstrung the things entirely. Please tweak them into working again.

[Veneroso]

I am not going to say that I should experience superb results with only 2 jumpjets on my Jenner, but I should at least be able to fly up out of the water on river city. Right now I need 5 jumpjets to accomplish the same results, requiring me to remove my AMS and AMS Ammo.

[Krivvan]

The main issue with jump jets now is that additional jump jets do not do much or anything at all for your jump height, which really is the main point of jump jets.

I've used 5 jump jets back when they made no difference in comparison to 1 and now with 5 real jumpjets I require about 70% - 95% of my jump jet fuel to even just barely clear the height of an enemy mech. 25% to 50% of jump jet fuel should be what is required to clear the height of an enemy mech. Extra jump jets should increase the max jump height and vertical jump speed as well as distance. Jump jets affecting distance doesn't really help the majority of jump jet users.

Adrienne Vorton, on 18 December 2012 - 10:10 PM, said:

most mechs (yes, in the evil canon) have at least 4 or 5 jumpjets (or maximum same ammount as walking speed ((2/3 of max speed)) only a few have just 2 or so, but mainly for a "little jump capacity"

so i wouldn´t be surprised if you need at least 4 JJ´s to use them effectively, especially on higher speeds... to be honest, i was prepared for that and "tried" to use a minimum of 4 JJ´s in my cat and jenner builds...

but i guess i´ll have to test them now for myself...

I didn't just prepare for that, I always had 5 jump jets in my Jenners. I've never just resorted to a single JJ in my Jenner. Even then, 5 jump jets now gives magnitudes less effect than jump jets before.

[Thegreatdive]

Its funny, when the patch hit, I added JJ to my Jenner. I just pulled the extras off, because I've decided that just like last patch, 1 provides the best value. Now all the JJ are good for are the fast turns that good pilots used them for in the first place. They offer absolutely no vertical agility at all. Essentially, pilots will arrive at the same conclusion for different reasons, but it boils down to the fact that 1 JJ is ALL THATS USEFUL. I'm not one to ***** about "omg they should've tested this moar!" but honestly, even a minute of testing would've tipped SOMEONE off to the fact that the usefulness of JJs was almost completely removed with the trajectory change.

[Adrienne Vorton]

hm... gotta test that myself...but as it sounds, that´s really bad ...

[DirePhoenix]

I tried 4 jumpjets in a CPLT-C1, and it did take me 120m as the capacity should be. The arc was ok, but I'm also just using jumpjets to get from point A to point B, not trying to pop-tart. It did seem a bit lower than I expected but I didn't check my altitude (I don't think we have altimeters anyway)

I have written my own proposal to rework Jump Jets here, which uses a completely different mechanic in which you "charge" your jets to launch you at the capacity you charge your jets for, instead of trying to use the spacebar as a throttle in a Lunar Lander arcade game. I think that would give a appropriate "jump" to the Jump Jets. Think of it like those old Artillery games where you charge the appropriate force, aim, and fire. Only instead of firing an artillery round, you're launching a 20-100t 'mech.

[Dukarriope]

The jump jets' distance balancing right now seems about right... But why is the new jump height so low? My Jenner with 4 jump jets is barely clearing buildings.

[inquisitor]

Fooooo, on 18 December 2012 - 09:51 PM, said:

If you read the notes again you will see that they mention that the trajectory etc may be different now than before, and that they will be tweaking it etc etc.

Yeah, but what it didn't say was that they changed it and never even bothered to text that they even did what they were supposed to do. It wasn't even that obvious that I had multiple jump-jets fitted, they were that awful. As stated: even a few minutes of anyone actually paying attention in the office would tell anyone that they are barely functional right now.

Overall, this is clearly a good patch, yet it does reinforce the idea that the devs are just throwing **** at a wall with little idea of what effect it will have.

[Garagano]

The state of the JJs went with this patch from the state:
-> "BROKEN - OP"
to the state:
-> "BROKEN - USELESS"

nothing changed really, except that i now have 1 disadvantage on my jenner more, compared to the all-mighty rvn-3L.
Well, OK 1 positive aspect on this is, that now i have 1 more ton space on my jenner that i can use for a better laser or HS, after i removed the useless JJ from the chassis.

Maybe PGI want us JJ users to show repentance for using the awesomeness of the OP JJs in the past?
What god do i have to pray to, to make JJs usefull again?

---

btw. i tested it with full 5/5 JJ and the max hight is laughable at best. And it seems that the higher you are, the less usefull the JJ is. I stand on a hill on FrozenCity and went barely 10 meters high. On lower grounds, its better, but still sluggishly slow.

Edited by Garagano, 19 December 2012 - 02:39 AM.

[JuiceKeeper]

hey, i tried them last night on cataphract 3d, prior patch i was running just 2 and after patch 2 JJ dont even lift you more then few metres from ground so i put 4 back on, but still they feel like they dont have enough vertical lift off power.

edit: i played with them last night (4JJ) and i found that since they trajectory its not so vertical how it was before you can make small jumps without loosing speed much easier then before, but its little bit harder to jump on small building even on river city. Would be nice if they would get you little bit more up at least in 4 jj version. But there should be something done when they are 2 so they are at least little bit usefull when you dont have full jump capacity, currently they are only good for turning around.

Edited by JuiceKeeper, 20 December 2012 - 02:21 AM.

[Dormax]

I tried 1 JJ on my Jenner, just for kicks. All it can do is hover, barely above the ground. OK, so add to the max and it's, frankly, not that good. JJ is one of the more fun aspects of the now psudo-nerffed Jenner (psudo-nerfed because ECM's are the rock to the Jenners overpowered Streaks ).
I kind of like the new trajectory and will adapt, but now, even with the lightest JJ mech and full JJ, the lift is so poor that it's hard to leap small boulders on caustic or get up the sides of the hills in forest (for example).