3 replies to this topic

[Gobboleone]

Hi there,
lately I read a lot about overpowered light mechs, assaults who are too easy targets because of their speed, bigger weapons on small mechs and so on.....
But honestly I believe thats not the point in the first place, I assume it is more an issue of offensive and defensive powers, which are slightly imbalanced right now in my opinion.
There is no problem in light mechs with big weapons or assault mechs beeing slow, or lights beeing harder to hit than heavies (even if it would be nice if PGI would solve that lag-shield-thing lights have), the problem is that you cant stand long enough if youre an easy to hit chassis like an Atlas or a Crab for example.

The Main Issue is that we got all the offensive upgrades and gadjets from the Battletech universe and not a single defensive one (focussing on dealing and taking damage).
We got exchangeable weapons, with the option for boating or giving more range, faster fire frequences or adding heavier weapons to chassis as originally intended. We're able to give every single chassis double heatsinks, which improves the firepower significantly and allows us to use even more effiective weaponbuilds. We got ferro fibres and endosteel to carry more heatsinks and even more weapons. And finally we got quirks and clantech weapons to give us more firepower, again.
Every modifialbe thing in this game (or at least the by far bigger part) is targeted to give us more and more firepower. There is no other way to modify your mech. I claim that not a single player even thinks about to not take an offensive upgrade like double heatsinks, they're not an option any longer, they are demanded if you wanna play serious.

But our armor got no upgrade. Yes it is slightly more as in the Battletech-archetype, and thats ok, because this is a shooter and you shoot alot more and more precise than in a table top game. But since the beta of mwo we got alot more firepower and our armor is the same as before.
Out of this disproportion arises the issue that we have an more offensive oriented game, in which bigger chassis who rely on armor instead of speed for their defense got a disadvantage, because they are still easy to hit, but can't take the shots as good as they should.
Like this the metagame will drift more and more to faster mechs with a lot of firepower and away from heavier mechs who stand their ground and take the shots instead of moving and hopping around to avoid them.

I would appreciate it if there would be an option for the big guys to choose armor instead of firepower for their tonnage, so that an assault is realy an obstacle again and not just an easy target you have to shoot on 3 seconds longer.

So my suggestions are:

Give us armor upgrades.
Something like:
Reactive Armor, which could reduce the damge dealt by projectiles (missiles, AC's, etc.) by about 50% (just an example),but would work normaly against everything else.
Reflective Armor, which does the same thing as the reactive counterpart but against energie based weapons.
Hardened Armor, which gives you more plain armor at the cost of using more slots and heavier weight.

Give us more Armor but let it have an effect on our maneuverability.
You could implement an option to overarmor a mech at the cost of ist speed, torso twist rate and range, arm twist rate, etc.
Maybe something like: You can carry 30% more tons of armor than normal but for every additional 10% armor or part thereof you loose 10% of your remaining speed/Torsotwist/etc.

Add intern Armor to protect Systems and Weapons:
You could implement internal armor or structure upgrades which use tonnage and slots but are more likely to be effected by a critical hit than the other systems in that area of the mech.


Please give us more options to tune our defense instead of just adding options to power up our firepower.
Give us the possibillity to realy choose in which way we wanna upgrade and play our mech. Only if you add options other than give us more firepower we will actual have the option to modify our mechs the way we need it to play them the way we want to.

Regards, Gobbo

PS: I am aware that I ignored all the ecm and bap stuff we got, but I think that this is a seperate topic.

[Johnny Z]

All for this idea if it doesnt mess up balance or become way to complicated. Great idea.

[Cybercobra]

this, this this this this this.

i run a king crab but honestly it feels like im running a slow light.

pop around a corner and there are 2 mechs there? well i just popped in 5 seconds. in one of the heavyest mechs in the game.

now i dont know about you but when i think of a mech game i think about a game about long drawn out fights and over time losing your systems and parts. not a 5 second massacre.

[VinJade]

the thing about harden armor is its not just heavier it also slow the mech down a bit so if you have a 20 ton locust with HA and normal speed is 8/12/0 then it would move a 7/10/0 or less(cannot remember exactly) so it would have to have that downside which would be bad for assaults to mount as it would really slow them down.

and a little nit pick it would be the King crab as the crab is a 50 mech with twin arm lasers, Medium Laser in the CT, and a Small in the head...