65 replies to this topic

[Syric Malvayis]

To Whom It Concerns,

I've been around since the "Alpha" stage, and as things stand, you've been making it more and more difficult to endure a fight against a small/light mech. I'll make this brief and straight-to-the-point:

- You took away mech knock-down. Why? Where did it go? Why haven't you implemented it back in? It was one of the best ideas you had considering the light mech vs. heavy: period! Common sense would dictate that when a light rams/slams into a med/heavy, that it should take considerable damage AND POSSIBLY BE KNOCKED DOWN. I'm not saying it should be 100% of the time, as directional impact (front, side, back, etc) should be factored into the equation, but there should be a consequence to bad piloting, or for not avoiding being rammed by something much larger than you.

- The damage inflicted to a light mech doesn't seem to reflect the actual substantial damage they should have sustained by ramming into, or being slammed by, a med/heavy mech. Why?

- ECM (Grr....): To make matters even worse, someone decided to give light mechs ECM, which has effectively removed my effort to counter-balance their speed + no knock-down + jets capabilities. I literally started designing my mechs to carry streak SRMs for the sole purpose of bringing anti-light mech capabilities to my team, and to counter the light mech harassment most teams face. And yet, with ECM in play, I find myself asking one question: why do I still bother? Two things need to happen:

- You need to re-balance the effectiveness of ECM
- We need an effective way to counter the effects of ECM

If you, the community, agree with what I'm suggesting here, then please "like" this post, reply to it, add to it, and give your two cents! Until they hear from a high volume of us, you can expect nothing to be done about this issue. Now, during beta, is the time to be heard.

Thank you for your time. Happy hunting (playing) everyone.

Edited by Syric Malvayis, 02 April 2013 - 11:51 PM.

[Karl Streiger]

An old song...and with every new voice singing it it sounds more sad....

during cb i ran a hunter killer AL...charging light mechs...and kill them with energy weapons...it was a pitty that it need SSRM to do the job

Edited by Karl Streiger, 03 April 2013 - 12:37 AM.

[Mypa333]

I drive a Spider SDR 5D, ecm, one ER PPC or 1 LL and 2 ML.

I agree that bringing back collision will make our lives more difficult but I don't think this will solve your issue.

The only times I bump in other mechs is rarely when I'm chasing an enemy light mech.

I believe you are piloting meds/heavies not lights and you have a good amount of armor, over 300,400.

I only have 200 to go, from which 56 in both my legs. So, what I understand from you, is that the lights should suffer even more damage from collisions, and still have the weakest armor in the game. I don't believe that's fair. It's your perspective. But if I give a go to my perspective, then medium and heavies should have lower armor so that lights can kill them easily. Fair ? No.

I mostly get killed by Lasers, Large Lasers that target my legs. Not streaks, or SRMs, or even LRMs. 3 good shots from 2 LL, that's more than enough to get one of my legs and the other cored red.

If I meet a Stalker or a Hunchie 4P, 4PS that are packing lots of lasers, I stay the f**k out of their way.

And I believe ECM is well balanced now, because if I meet a SSRM Cat, I would get killed in one or 2 shots. That is not OK, too much of an advantage. Aiming is one of the qualities that make you a good pilot....................and I hate Ravens 3L that pack SSRMS.

_________________________________
DAMN RAVENS 3L

Edited by Mypa333, 03 April 2013 - 01:11 AM.

[Karl Streiger]

Mypa333, on 03 April 2013 - 01:03 AM, said:

I mostly get killed by Lasers, Large Lasers that target my legs. Not streaks, or SRMs, or even LRMs. 3 good shots from 2 LL, that's more than enough to get one of my legs and the other cored red.

Of course you got killed by Laser weapons...they have those magic rewinde state...and they deal damage over time...means you can use them like a scythe. On a light every hit counts. And laser deal linear damage...if you have the laser only for 100ms on target you still have dealt 1dmg.
So laser fire should be stacked - 25% damage after 50% of beam duration or similar. 50% damage after 75% beam duration.
That would weaken normal lasers so it will need pulse lasers to deal more damage towards light mechs.
With that change ramming should become fair again

[Chino]

Mypa333, on 03 April 2013 - 01:03 AM, said:

How light mechs need more love and stealth suits.

There is already twice amount of armor ingame so spider in normal conditions should die twice faster.
Ecm in current state is infused with magice device , its like 3 in 1, including stealth suit. Wanna make Ecm benefit from all it functions then make it weight equally to its functions and take that amount critical space.

Ye and If U meet splatcat, ye if U meet other cheese build ?

And after thermal vision gone ecm mech can roam all around map w/o beeing seen.

[Mypa333]

Chino, on 03 April 2013 - 03:06 AM, said:

There is already twice amount of armor ingame so spider in normal conditions should die twice faster.
Ecm in current state is infused with magice device , its like 3 in 1, including stealth suit. Wanna make Ecm benefit from all it functions then make it weight equally to its functions and take that amount critical space.

Ye and If U meet splatcat, ye if U meet other cheese build ?

And after thermal vision gone ecm mech can roam all around map w/o beeing seen.

I never said "How light mechs need more love and stealth suits."

So what are you saying is that lights should have less armor, die a lot more faster so you can get more kills.
Basically, only FATlases should be able to mount ECM becase they have the necessary space.

Please let me know how many hard points do the lights have and how many does the Atlas have? You're being very unreasonable. I sincerely don't understand the need to make easy kills with the SSRMs, because that's where you're going to.

You can mount lasers, SRMs even autocannons to counter lights, I had great fun shooting lights with my Gauss, driving a Hunchie.

And I really doubt that we're playing hide and seek here. I haven't seen a mech just hiding, without going for a shot at an enemy mech.

Hints:
1. In Assault mode, one friendly mech should guard the base, another should go attack enemy base.
2. In Conquest mode, you take out most of the heavies and if a light remains, there should be a mech guarding certain points. I always advise my teammates to do this and we mostly get results. But these are the rules of the game. ***I don't play in a clan or with teamchat, i just hit LAUNCH***

And I feel some pilots are going for deathmatch and forget that success comes from team players, and that the point of the game is capturing base/resources first, then killing all the mechs on the map.

Edited by Mypa333, 03 April 2013 - 03:50 AM.

[xxx WreckinBallRaj xxx]

Going on 5 months now. I originally estimated 6+ for them to do something about ECM. It won't be much longer now!

[Chino]

You say they dont need stealth suits but You say ecm is currently balanced.
And in current mode they are stealth suits.
Preventing miss locks? They were made in era of miss supremacy, after missiles got nerfed ecm stayed as it is and its way above

Im fine with light taking kills, but im not fine when light pilots cry when there is topic about balancing out their beloved toy, ECM.

[Ralgas]

Syric Malvayis, on 02 April 2013 - 11:45 PM, said:

To Whom It Concerns,

I've been around since the "Alpha" stage, and as things stand, you've been making it more and more difficult to endure a fight against a small/light mech. I'll make this brief and straight-to-the-point:

- You took away mech knock-down. Why? Where did it go? Why haven't you implemented it back in? It was one of the best ideas you had considering the light mech vs. heavy: period! Common sense would dictate that when a light rams/slams into a med/heavy, that it should take considerable damage AND POSSIBLY BE KNOCKED DOWN. I'm not saying it should be 100% of the time, as directional impact (front, side, back, etc) should be factored into the equation, but there should be a consequence to bad piloting, or for not avoiding being rammed by something much larger than you.

- The damage inflicted to a light mech doesn't seem to reflect the actual substantial damage they should have sustained by ramming into, or being slammed by, a med/heavy mech. Why?

- ECM (Grr....): To make matters even worse, someone decided to give light mechs ECM, which has effectively removed my effort to counter-balance their speed + no knock-down + jets capabilities. I literally started designing my mechs to carry streak SRMs for the sole purpose of bringing anti-light mech capabilities to my team, and to counter the light mech harassment most teams face. And yet, with ECM in play, I find myself asking one question: why do I still bother? Two things need to happen:

- You need to re-balance the effectiveness of ECM
- We need an effective way to counter the effects of ECM

If you, the community, agree with what I'm suggesting here, then please "like" this post, reply to it, add to it, and give your two cents! Until they hear from a high volume of us, you can expect nothing to be done about this issue. Now, during beta, is the time to be heard.

Thank you for your time. Happy hunting (playing) everyone.

Do you follow dev posts/patch notes?

*Knockdowns are coming back, but they had to upgrade several other systems 1st, collision detection being a big one. It is getting phased back in.

*Ecm has ppc/tag counters. I find a bucket with ppc/streak combo quite effective now but it's only going to get better with...

*netcode and host state rewind has significantly reduced light effectiveness, as stage 2 hsr will be the one affecting ppcs (weps with a projectile in terms of game mechanics) see above. Several other issues (raven hitboxes last patch?) have also been addressed

*And as always, teamwork & communication is op in a team based game!! find a 4man with viop and call it when your in poo poo..........

Just because it's not your version of balanced doesn't mean they aren't working on it

[StalaggtIKE]

Syric Malvayis, on 02 April 2013 - 11:45 PM, said:

- The damage inflicted to a light mech doesn't seem to reflect the actual substantial damage they should have sustained by ramming into, or being slammed by, a med/heavy mech. Why?

I have a theory, it all boils down to armor allocation, size and how damage is calculated. For instance, when you aim and fire you mlaser at an Atlas's CT several factors come into effect:

• Mlaser produces 5pts of damage spread over a 1 second beam
  
• Due to the Atlas's large size it's pretty easy to keep the beam on the CT, thus full 5pts of damage

Now, when you aim and fire you mlaser at a Spider's CT same rules apply except the CT is considerably smaller. Like all mechs, his CT is sandwiched between the LT and RT. So, when firing upon such a small fast moving target you're typically spreading damage from CT to LT and RT, even possibly LA and RA as well. This is how fast it takes to spread damage over time.

• 1 sec - 5 dmg
  
• 1/2 sec - 2.5 dmg
  
• 1/4 sec - 1.25 dmg
  
• 1/8 sec - 0.625 dmg

More than likely a shot aim at the CT becomes only a 1/2 seconds of concentrated damage or worse only around 1/4 seconds. This allows him to absorb far more damage over time. You may have noticed that Commandoes goes down a lot easier than most other lights. This is because of its considerably broad chest, allowing for easier CT damage. The devs recently addressed this issue with the Raven, making the ability to focus fire on a given section more reliable. I believe all lights should be have their armor allocation reassessed. I would say go as far as to remove LT/RT armored section and just make it all fall under CT. However that may be a bit too drastic.
I would rather see pulse lasers redesigned in order to make damaging lights easier. There's a wonderful post that discuss that, here: OVERHAUL OF PULSE LASERS.

Quote

- You need to re-balance the effectiveness of ECM
- We need an effective way to counter the effects of ECM

Once properly balanced, ECM wont even need to be countered. Basically ECM should be a tool for countering, not the sole enabler of information as well as denial of information. I go in to extensive details on how ECM takes over the jobs of several devices, mostly BAP and AMS, and how it should be fixed, here: ECM ANNOUNCEMENT - DISCUSSION. Mind you, a lot has changed since then; however I feel the same way about most of it.

[Dein Idol]

In general I don't have problems very often with lights. They are annoying, for sure Normally I get there legs quite OK.
But there are two things which are really bad.
- That you can't look SSRM even when you see them or not even manual fire them.
- If the light pilot is good, I don't have a chance in a hunchback on open field. It is close to impossible to hit them. (always in the back, happend three times in Alpine to me)

On the first point there is something which can be done, let us fire the SSRM manually.
The second point could be solvable with the airstrike/artillery strike and is quite rare anyhow.

[focuspark]

State rewind for ballistics and missile will help immensely - assuming the developers both with it.

ECM needs to be balanced. Right now it's complete bull**** and seems to have been designed by a ten year old kids playing the "my stuff is better than your stuff" game.

Knockdown was removed due to issues it was causing. It might return one day, but I don't think it'll add much to be honest.

Edited by focuspark, 03 April 2013 - 08:25 AM.

[Mypa333]

StalaggtIKE, on 03 April 2013 - 07:07 AM, said:

I have a theory, it all boils down to armor allocation, size and how damage is calculated. For instance, when you aim and fire you mlaser at an Atlas's CT several factors come into effect:

• Mlaser produces 5pts of damage spread over a 1 second beam
  
• Due to the Atlas's large size it's pretty easy to keep the beam on the CT, thus full 5pts of damage

Now, when you aim and fire you mlaser at a Spider's CT same rules apply except the CT is considerably smaller. Like all mechs, his CT is sandwiched between the LT and RT. So, when firing upon such a small fast moving target you're typically spreading damage from CT to LT and RT, even possibly LA and RA as well. This is how fast it takes to spread damage over time.

• 1 sec - 5 dmg
  
• 1/2 sec - 2.5 dmg
  
• 1/4 sec - 1.25 dmg
  
• 1/8 sec - 0.625 dmg

More than likely a shot aim at the CT becomes only a 1/2 seconds of concentrated damage or worse only around 1/4 seconds. This allows him to absorb far more damage over time. You may have noticed that Commandoes goes down a lot easier than most other lights. d say go as far as to remove LT/RT armored section and just make it all fall under CT. However that may be a bit too drastic.

So it's not ok to do full damage on an Atlas that has 600 armor, packs lots of hardpoints with very diverse weapons, but it's ok to get the lights armor even weaker, lights that have poor heat, poor armor, poor hardpoints ?

My Spider has only 25 armor on the CT, 8 on each left and right torso. How is getting my armor down help me play this game and not get shot in the first couple of seconds of game ? Lights are annoying because they are fast but pack few weapons, heavies pack lots of weapons but they are slow. Those are the rules of the game. You're suggesting to bend them so we will all be driving only heavies because the lights will be so fragile and of course you want to bring power to the STREAKS again.

Your problem is with the light mech Raven 3L that f**ks the game for everybody, even for my Spider.

In my last 11 matches, I have encountered:

* 7 times the Raven 3L - managed to kill only one with the help of my team, the rest of times I DIED because of the STREAKS, not because of the pilot's skills to shoot the MLs.
* one Spider 5 D which I found quite interesting, because I know the build very well and after I got his arm packing the lasers it was very simple to kill
* one Jenner D , which did quite a number on me, packing 4 MLs, I managed to get one of his legs and the other made it red but he finally killed me BECAUSE HE HAD MORE ARMOR than me
* one poor Commando 2D which I shot down immediately by getting his legs in which he carried the AMMO for SSRMS, died y AMMO Explosion.

So, I don't believe you are very fair in your suggestions. I wanted to play the Spider 5V with the 2 laser slots and awesome jump jets but I chose the SPIDER 5D because I wanted to leverage the odds just a little bit, because of THE DAMN RAVENS 3L.

_______________________________________________
DAMN RAVENS 3L

Edited by Mypa333, 03 April 2013 - 08:49 AM.

[StalaggtIKE]

Mypa333, on 03 April 2013 - 08:47 AM, said:

So it's not ok to do full damage on an Atlas that has 600 armor, packs lots of hardpoints with very diverse weapons, but it's ok to get the lights armor even weaker, lights that have poor heat, poor armor, poor hardpoints ?

My Spider has only 25 armor on the CT, 8 on each left and right torso. How is getting my armor down help me play this game and not get shot in the first couple of seconds of game ? Lights are annoying because they are fast but pack few weapons, heavies pack lots of weapons but they are slow. Those are the rules of the game. You're suggesting to bend them so we will all be driving only heavies because the lights will be so fragile and of course you want to bring power to the STREAKS again.

Your problem is with the light mech Raven 3L that f**ks the game for everybody, even for my Spider.

In my last 11 matches, I have encountered:

* 7 times the Raven 3L - managed to kill only one with the help of my team, the rest of times I DIED because of the STREAKS, not because of the pilot's skills to shoot the MLs.
* one Spider 5 D which I found quite interesting, because I know the build very well and after I got his arm packing the lasers it was very simple to kill
* one Jenner D , which did quite a number on me, packing 4 MLs, I managed to get one of his legs and the other made it red but he finally killed me BECAUSE HE HAD MORE ARMOR than me
* one poor Commando 2D which I shot down immediately by getting his legs in which he carried the AMMO for SSRMS, died y AMMO Explosion.

So, I don't believe you are very fair in your suggestions. I wanted to play the Spider 5V with the 2 laser slots and awesome jump jets but I chose the SPIDER 5D because I wanted to leverage the odds just a little bit, because of THE DAMN RAVENS 3L.

_______________________________________________
DAMN RAVENS 3L

LOL! The heck you're talking about? I can't even conceive how you possibly came up with any of these conclusions. Reread what I posted.

[Batnar]

another thing is terrain colission damage. If you take 10 damage from ramming a building at full speed, suddenly lights become way less manoeuvrable.

[Mypa333]

StalaggtIKE, on 03 April 2013 - 10:17 AM, said:

LOL! The heck you're talking about? I can't even conceive how you possibly came up with any of these conclusions. Reread what I posted.

I believe this part " d say go as far as to remove LT/RT armored section and just make it all fall under CT. However that may be a bit too drastic."

This would be like driving a Jenner, always getting all hits the CT.

Edited by Mypa333, 03 April 2013 - 10:52 AM.

[StalaggtIKE]

Mypa333, on 03 April 2013 - 10:52 AM, said:

I believe this part " d say go as far as to remove LT/RT armored section and just make it all fall under CT. However that may be a bit too drastic."

This would be like driving a Jenner, always getting all hits the CT.

Ha! You even quoted it. What part of "however that may be a bit too drastic", do you not understand?

[Neverther]

Today I've seen SDR-5D going 150kph, have ecm and jumpjets, and 3 medium lasers (alteast some were pulse by the sound).
One on one, killed me in my fullhealth 4SP, 4ML in arms did nothing as hits dont seem to register right, missiles are useless at those speeds as they dont ever hit.
In the end rest of the team was shooting at him and he finished first in the enemy team with over 500 damage.
Same mech on other map, this time in my 4G, lucky shot to rear CT made the internals red and still it took forever to finish him off (again 2ML did prettymuch nothing to armor until he started to run away and got the CT).

3Ls are not a problem anymore as hitboxes were fixed (I remeber hitting stationary 2X to the peak with AC20 and no damage before the patch).
I think the 5Ds as new ravens as only way to kill them is lucky shot with AC20.

Edited by Neverther, 03 April 2013 - 01:39 PM.

[Royalewithcheese]

Relevant Command Chair post is up!

[IrrelevantFish]

Syric Malvayis, on 02 April 2013 - 11:45 PM, said:

You took away mech knock-down. Why? Where did it go? Why haven't you implemented it back in?

The answers to these questions are respectively:

• Because it was buggy
  
• To the low-priority section of PGI's to-do list.
  
• Because collisions are really, really hard to do properly when lag is involved, and they thought there were more important things for their coders to do, like state rewind.

I agree that ECM needs some adjustment, but lights aren't nearly as powerful now that they've nerfed missiles and tinkered with the Raven hitboxes. Lights are quite manageable, even without Streaks, and these days they even have to worry about PPCs and AC20s. That is a lesson learned through observation and experience, both as a giver and a receiver