26 replies to this topic

[Reptilizer]

First i would like to state that i am in general ok with nerfing mobility on cats. Got an A1 myself and yes, splatcat is (was) too mobile. Also got a K2 and yes, it was still quick enough to dogfight well with 2 Gauss. The high torso twist angle allowed very fast tracking of opponents.

What i really have a problem with now is that with the blanket torso twist nerf thrown over all cats, the LRM ones can scrap any close range weapons. Because with the overall twist nerf, you also track much slower in the relevant area of 60° in front of your mech. "You wont hit small mechs now, so just better go all boating LRM" cant be the right philosophy for e.g the C1.

"But they did not say anthing about twist speed!" Yes, they did not state it and i am not sure they actually realize what they did there.
But since the total time from moving the torso from one extreme to the other extreme has stayed the same, the relative tracking speed has massively decreased. Whis is not a good thing for long range support that wants any defence capability against light brawlers.

Tl/Dr:
A massive decrease in tracking speed was part of this nerf. If that was intended, it is a big problem for long range support and forces even more into boating LRM than before because close range defence has become even more ineffective.

Edited by Reptilizer, 20 March 2013 - 01:03 AM.

[Kmieciu]

The Catapult was probably the most popular mech in 8vs8. You got gausscats, splatcats, boomcats. With the recent nerf, maybe we'll see some other mechs in those roles.

[Teralitha]

If atlas pilots can brawl with their super slow mobility, you can get used to yours, which still isnt as slow as an atlas. You now have the agility of a heavy mech, instead of a light mech. Its how it should be. Get used to it.

Edited by Teralitha, 20 March 2013 - 01:29 AM.

[Postumus]

Long range support mechs do not need to rely on a high torso twist rate or angle, because they are aiming at targets at long range, and therefore need to move very little. The reason the catapult needed this change is not that it was too good at long range support, it was that it was good at every range everything. For its weight class you could make any conceivable build, and it would not only be viable but the best in its class or near. Mechs in this game are supposed to have advantages and drawbacks. Support mechs are expected to have to sacrifice close range defense capability.

In any case, it still has one of the better torso twist ranges, 120 degrees for the missile variants, 110 for the K2. Compare this to 90 degrees for the dragon, which is one of the iconic support mechs. The catapult is still a great mech, it just might not be the undisputed best heavy anymore for everything except pop-tart sniping. Thank god for that, Catapult: Online gets boring real quick.

[Caboosegg]

I use a founders c1, it made up as a all rounder as 2 missile slots is not really enough to make a dedicated missile boat, it seem this nerf came into the game to stop overpower builds with no consideration for the player that actaully use balanced cats

[Reptilizer]

Teralitha, on 20 March 2013 - 01:28 AM, said:

If atlas pilots can brawl with their super slow mobility, you can get used to yours, which still isnt as slow as an atlas. You now have the agility of a heavy mech, instead of a light mech. Its how it should be. Get used to it.

Thanks for the comment but you missed the point.
If you face an Atlas (or a splatcat for this matter) you face an alpha of 50+. They dont need good tracking because they just need to hit twice to get rid of near anything that moves.
If you have a balanced LRM build, you need the tracking because you only got 2 medium lasers to defend yourself. And you will not get away with the speed of a cat.
As of now, having a balanced build makes less sense than before giving more incentive to pure boating.
Which i do not want.

[Reptilizer]

Postumus, on 20 March 2013 - 01:29 AM, said:

Long range support mechs do not need to rely on a high torso twist rate or angle, because they are aiming at targets at long range, and therefore need to move very little. The reason the catapult needed this change is not that it was too good at long range support, it was that it was good at every range everything. For its weight class you could make any conceivable build, and it would not only be viable but the best in its class or near. Mechs in this game are supposed to have advantages and drawbacks. Support mechs are expected to have to sacrifice close range defense capability.

In any case, it still has one of the better torso twist ranges, 120 degrees for the missile variants, 110 for the K2. Compare this to 90 degrees for the dragon, which is one of the iconic support mechs. The catapult is still a great mech, it just might not be the undisputed best heavy anymore for everything except pop-tart sniping. Thank god for that, Catapult: Online gets boring real quick.

Cool, now we have reduced versatility. We are building pure snipers and pure LRM boats now, because that is what was always planned for the cat and the other weapon slots are just for decoration. Boating for the win!
And that is a good thing?
Not in my world.

Also comparing Dragons and Cats is comparing apples and oranges. Cat got no flexible arms. The weapons are torso mounted/fixed so torso twist speed and tilt defines your tracking capabilities. Guess who has a LOT better tracking?

Actually this totally screws at least the C1 build over, which was set up as a balanced build. The hardpoint layout now dictates horribad performance as a boat compared to the other variants. Great. Not.

Edited by Reptilizer, 20 March 2013 - 03:21 AM.

[Scarlett Avignon]

I'm really, really sorry that your gauss/splat/boomcat isn't the uber solo pwn-mobile it used to be </3

[Reptilizer]

Franklen Avignon, on 20 March 2013 - 03:23 AM, said:

I'm really, really sorry that your gauss/splat/boomcat isn't the uber solo pwn-mobile it used to be </3

At least read part of the post before commenting. That is exactly the opposite of what this is about. Thanks for not reading.

[AJ Frost]

Reptilizer, you will not get a lot of sympathy. You're asking why anyone should take a non boating Catapult now? well the question is why should anyone take ANY non boating mech currently? If you had a two missile two energy loadout that worked for you, great. most people had long since ditched that (to my dismay as well), going for as much pinpoint damage or as much of the same weapon as possible. Fact is, that the catapult on it's own was better than ANY other heavy cause it was fast enough, agile enough, and with enough hardpoints to boo(a)t.

So if you're now down with the rest in the mud, it may have been a bad decision in your eyes. Still, the Cat is now mor ein line with everything else which in my eyes is good.

[ego1607]

Well, I never made any boats because I find them boring. I used to play my A1 with a mix of LRMs and SRMs, and it was great. Now I can just sell the damn thing because it's just underclassed if not built as a boat.

I have a feeling devs decided to nerf the cat to make it inferior to the new jagermech and make some more money on people not willing to grind for their new chasis.

I must admit I feel a bit cheated now because I've spent both money and time on my cat collection under the presumption that it was a maneuverable chasis suporting a more dynamic playstile. These nerfs didn't just adjust the game balance slightly, as did the cicada nerfs for example, but they changred the whole deal, making cats basicaly siting ducks that stay behind and shoot misles untill a raven comes and blows them away.

Seriosuly, someone explain to me why should I ever drop in a K2 now for example?

[AJ Frost]

Why should you drop in a Raven 2x / 4x? Why go for the Dragon with three ballistic slots or a spider with four? Why go for a medium if you could have a catapult? Because
A you like it
B you like going against the trend
C you can make it work
D you don't mind
E you just wanna have fun

And the K2 still has high mounted PPC slots and dual AC/ gauss in a side torso that's damn difficult to destroy. Look, I'm not saying it didn't get worse, and I couldn't argue whether it's too bad or not. But There's not just one catapult that has become a less than stellar choice. There's an abundance of less than stellar choices. And if nerfing the catapult increases the validity of other mechs / variants again (that weren't before), so much the better in my oppinion.

[Reptilizer]

AJ Frost, on 20 March 2013 - 03:49 AM, said:

Reptilizer, you will not get a lot of sympathy. You're asking why anyone should take a non boating Catapult now? well the question is why should anyone take ANY non boating mech currently? If you had a two missile two energy loadout that worked for you, great. most people had long since ditched that (to my dismay as well), going for as much pinpoint damage or as much of the same weapon as possible. Fact is, that the catapult on it's own was better than ANY other heavy cause it was fast enough, agile enough, and with enough hardpoints to boo(a)t.

So if you're now down with the rest in the mud, it may have been a bad decision in your eyes. Still, the Cat is now mor ein line with everything else which in my eyes is good.

I can accept that reasoning for the A1 and K2. They were somewhat outstanding and needed to be brought in line.
I fail to see why this logic has to be applied for the other two though. They were not that outstanding and they did not lend themselves as well to boating.
Myself got no "Ah, damned no sk1llz founders C1 got the better of me again. This n33ds nerfbat!" but a lot of "HATE splatcats. Noobboat, nerfnerfnerf".
No reason why they had to pull all of them down if not all were broken.

AJ Frost, on 20 March 2013 - 04:16 AM, said:

Why should you drop in a Raven 2x / 4x? Why go for the Dragon with three ballistic slots or a spider with four? Why go for a medium if you could have a catapult? Because
A you like it
B you like going against the trend
C you can make it work
D you don't mind
E you just wanna have fun

And the K2 still has high mounted PPC slots and dual AC/ gauss in a side torso that's damn difficult to destroy. Look, I'm not saying it didn't get worse, and I couldn't argue whether it's too bad or not. But There's not just one catapult that has become a less than stellar choice. There's an abundance of less than stellar choices. And if nerfing the catapult increases the validity of other mechs / variants again (that weren't before), so much the better in my oppinion.

You can make a lot of mechs still fun to play and non boat (heck, i even found enjoing variants for a 4G hunch with 3MGs) and not pull your team down.
That will become very difficult for some Cats now. You have to follow a very narrow, hardpoint defined track now to not totally suck in that chassis. I play this game, because i can tinker around and customize my mechs.
The Cat has become the one example where hardcoded limits to hardpoints, hitboxes and movement options railroad you to a single viable option.
I think i am most mad about that fact.

Especially as it could easily have been avoided because this should be quirks, right? So no need to pull them all down all the way the same.

Edited by Reptilizer, 20 March 2013 - 04:39 AM.

[AJ Frost]

Reptilizer, on 20 March 2013 - 04:39 AM, said:

[...]
The Cat has become the one example where hardcoded limits to hardpoints, hitboxes and movement options railroad you to a single viable option.
I think i am most mad about that fact.

Especially as it could easily have been avoided because this should be quirks, right? So no need to pull them all down all the way the same.

I can understand why you're mad. It's a subjective view of course, but I can understand it and relate. You had something not overly powerful but valid and working. I can't quite grasp why chagning the Torso twist affects the speed, but I'm not gonna argue with that. My chassis hasn't been changed after all.

But please consider this: If they indeed try to force the catapult into a support role as you suspect, doesn't that free up a role as close support for mediums that help defend the catapult when it gets into trouble? Wouldn't that kind of teamwork (however difficult to achieve it may be) be something desirable? Wouldn't you feel great having saved someone's steely behind with LRMs, just to see him crest a hill and blast away at the raven that's been giving you trouble?

From an attackers point of view (mostly in a Trebuchet or Centurio-D currently), for me it's quite annoying that even if you position yourself nicely and sneak up on a catapult, you will seldom have more than an occasional shot at it's back because of the ability to turn that Torso thus far. I like teamplay. And no, I'm not saying organized 8 vs 8 or unit based - just with friends. If I can sneak up on the rocket artillery, I think someone in it's team (other than the LRM carrier) didn't pay attention. It's rewarding. And I got my behind kicked the other day after sneaking up on two lrm stalkers - not by the stalkers (which would have been enough), but by the identically painted Cataphract they immediately calld for help. Boy, did I wish I had had more support XD

So yes, I do see your point. But I also see a possibility that it may actually be good thing. But currently I cannot decide if your view or mine will be the correct judgement. If indeed the C1 get's dropped and disused, you've been totally right. If it still get's a role, then I think you will manage to find it or adapt to another chassis. After all, there's more fun to be had here!

Edited by AJ Frost, 20 March 2013 - 05:03 AM.

[Chrithu]

OP: Are you absolutely sure that torso twist speed works that way?

Because in my experience with my K2 it still turns the torso as fast as ever. But according to your hypothesis the K2 (by having it's max twist reduced the most) should be affected by this the most.

May sound offensive but: Reading a lot of complaints in these forums based on theoretical numbermagic (maths) I get the feeling a lot of people spend too much time calculating and too little time actually playing. Because often times (not allways but quite often) the conclusions you people draw from your theories simply do not match the ingame experiences I have.

Example of this are all those people using excell tables about DPS or DPS per heat or DPS per Heat per second (WTF????!!!) to tell me all ballistic weapons are essentially underpowered except for the gauss rifle, While my experience in the game shows that all the AC's are cool stuff to use and the only truely broken ballistic weapons is the machine gun.

Edited by Jason Parker, 20 March 2013 - 05:13 AM.

[Reptilizer]

Jason Parker, on 20 March 2013 - 05:09 AM, said:

OP: Are you absolutely sure that torso twist speed works that way?

Because in my experience with my K2 it still turns the torso as fast as ever. But according to your hypothesis the K2 (by having it's max twist reduced the most) should be affected by this the most.

May sound offensive but: Reading a lot of complaints in these forums based on theoretical numbermagic (maths) I get the feeling a lot of people spend too much time calculating and too little time actually playing. Because often times (not allways but quite often) the conclusions you people draw from your theories simply do not match the ingame experiences I have.

I do not know how torso twist speed is calculated exactly and i do not know if there is a speed buildup/decrease etc. involved.
I also did not calculate any numbers for that.
But i do see my turning time for a full turn stay the same as ever. Just that this full turn now has less degrees to cover. So there has to be a decrease in torso twist speed, covering less degrees per second.
E.g. 100° in 2 seconds makes 50°/sec, now 80° in 2 seconds makes 40°/sec
Less number magic than logic, but i sure am not infallible.

[MustrumRidcully]

I think the torso twist was long overdue, but I think it wouldn't hurt to revisit a few other features of the Catapults as well.
Considering that the Jagermech has 8 weapon hard points, this really seems fair.

K2: It really needs 2 energy slots in each arm. This is supposed to be where its main weapons are, but by having only 1 per arm, your build options are extremely thin. No wonder we see more ballistic custom builds than energy custom builds. (The other reason of course is that energy weapons for a long time were bad...)

C1: I think this is a mech that could keep the "old" torso twist range, simply because it is actually equipped with 4 medium lasers stock and might actually be designed for most close range combat for that reason.

A1: I would raise the max number of Jump Jets on this thing (maybe even up to 8) , making it extremely maneuverable (if you chose to invest the tonnage), and maybe add Dual AMS. If they ever rebalance ECM and Streaks (or missiles in general), I think it could alternatively use an ECM slot. We still don't have an ECM capable heavy. (But if not, OMG don't do it.)

C4: Add another two missile slots. It has 2 LRM20s in their stock, it should have the option of changing its LRM configuration a bit more...

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 20 March 2013 - 05:44 AM.

[warp103]

Jason Parker, on 20 March 2013 - 05:09 AM, said:

OP: Are you absolutely sure that torso twist speed works that way?

Because in my experience with my K2 it still turns the torso as fast as ever. But according to your hypothesis the K2 (by having it's max twist reduced the most) should be affected by this the most.

May sound offensive but: Reading a lot of complaints in these forums based on theoretical numbermagic (maths) I get the feeling a lot of people spend too much time calculating and too little time actually playing. Because often times (not allways but quite often) the conclusions you people draw from your theories simply do not match the ingame experiences I have.

Example of this are all those people using excell tables about DPS or DPS per heat or DPS per Heat per second (WTF????!!!) to tell me all ballistic weapons are essentially underpowered except for the gauss rifle, While my experience in the game shows that all the AC's are cool stuff to use and the only truely broken ballistic weapons is the machine gun.

?? ok let set something st8r. I have a 1.01 k/d and have over 3k in match play.Over 1.5k of my matchs in a c1,k2 and c4.SO when i tell you and show you a video.I know it is slower not by just math but by game play. simple they nerfed both twist time and angle. Or they opps forgot to chg the lock to lock time. IE it is taking the same amount of time to go from 110 to 110 as is it did to 140 to 140. . so for k2 and c4 with fixed hard pionts your track of any mech over 90 kph {that a lot of mechs} you are toast.

SO double nerf bat to the cat. OR Mousecat. So i have no choice but to boat or ask for my masters to be moved. I choice to ask for it to be moved because am not a Boater.

http://mwomercs.com/...uirks-feedback/ has the video

Edited by warp103, 20 March 2013 - 06:38 AM.

[Reptilizer]

warp103, on 20 March 2013 - 06:28 AM, said:

http://mwomercs.com/...uirks-feedback/ has the video

Thanks for the vid!
I really am not sure if this whole thing was intentinal or just sloppy tweaking of the scripts as you suggest. From what i have experienced with PGI so far, could be both. Sometimes they make extremly questionable decisions and declare them intentional, sometimes they are able to pull a nice stunt like they did with the consumables.
We will see what this one is...

Edited by Reptilizer, 20 March 2013 - 07:50 AM.

[Scarlett Avignon]

Reptilizer, on 20 March 2013 - 03:26 AM, said:

At least read part of the post before commenting. That is exactly the opposite of what this is about. Thanks for not reading.

And you are missing the point that nobody takes the builds you are talking about anymore. I can't remember the last time I saw a Catapult the wasn't Splat/Boom/Gauss. It's not hurting any other builds because no one brings them. These nerfs were a vain attempt to fix the rampant boating.

And just to be clear, nothing is going to fix it. As long as mech lab builds are allowed in ranked games, MWO will always be a twink-fest.