48 replies to this topic

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Alymbic, on 11 April 2013 - 09:50 PM, said:

*begins refurbishing machine gun spider*

sssssh cant talk about the achinegunmay, locks will happen

[Alymbic]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 11 April 2013 - 09:56 PM, said:

sssssh cant talk about the achinegunmay, locks will happen

You underestimate the power of my troll spider....

[Wintersdark]

Yeah... no.

Wouldn't work. Don't get me wrong, I'd love something like this, but... no.

Lights (and many mediums) are pretty damn heavily armed for their tonnage. Sure, they lack armor, but 12 lights focusing one Atlas at a time (easy to coordinate) would tear it apart instantly. Forget 3L's and Trollmandos, it doesn't even matter. Lets assume 4 medium lasers per RandomMech. That's 48 medium lasers, cooled by at least 240 heat sink equivalents(12 RandomMechsx10DHS) And that's pretty much the base line damage output.

[Alymbic]

Wintersdark, on 11 April 2013 - 10:02 PM, said:

Yeah... no.

Wouldn't work. Don't get me wrong, I'd love something like this, but... no.

Lights (and many mediums) are pretty damn heavily armed for their tonnage. Sure, they lack armor, but 12 lights focusing one Atlas at a time (easy to coordinate) would tear it apart instantly. Forget 3L's and Trollmandos, it doesn't even matter. Lets assume 4 medium lasers per RandomMech. That's 48 medium lasers, cooled by at least 240 heat sink equivalents(12 RandomMechsx10DHS) And that's pretty much the base line damage output.

Plus every time a light dies, that team loses 1/12 of its firepower. Each time an Atlas dies, that team loses a 1/3.

[NextGame]

System needs to be based on some kind of battle value based on weapons, armour & equipment (ECM/Consumables) brought to the field and not solely based on tonnage, otherwise forget it.

Edited by NextGame, 11 April 2013 - 10:17 PM.

[Straften]

Wintersdark, on 11 April 2013 - 10:02 PM, said:

Lights (and many mediums) are pretty damn heavily armed for their tonnage. Sure, they lack armor, but 12 lights focusing one Atlas at a time (easy to coordinate) would tear it apart instantly. Forget 3L's and Trollmandos, it doesn't even matter. Lets assume 4 medium lasers per RandomMech. That's 48 medium lasers, cooled by at least 240 heat sink equivalents(12 RandomMechsx10DHS) And that's pretty much the base line damage output.

This is a good point.
Any ideas on how to balance this?
Perhaps for each mech less than the 12 max, your team gets a small, stackable bonus. A tank, or elemental for example.
People have also mentioned battle value.

[Johnny Reb]

FupDup, on 11 April 2013 - 08:46 PM, said:

I would pay to watch 10 Spiders or 12 Streakmandos duke it out with 3 Atlai.

Heh, I would feel bad for the atlas.

[Morang]

300 tons for 12 mechs max is too few.

First you should calculate the appropriate "average" mech mass. If you give an equal weight for each possible tonnage, it will be 60 tons. Calculated as (20 + 25 + 30+ 35 +.... +100)/17 - sum of all tonnages divided by their number

You can somewhat adjust for assault class having 5 tonnages instead of 4 and give equal weight to each weight class by summarising average mass of the weight class and dividing by number of classes: (27.5+47.5+67.5+90)/4 = 58.125. Not very far from 60 though.

Another option is to give different weights to different classes. Mercs Handbook states that in the IS weight classes have prominence of 30/40/20/10 percents for Light/Medium/Heavy/Assault. Then average mech mass should be: 27.5 * 0.3 + 47.5 * 0.4 + 67.5 * 0.2 + 90 * 0.1 = 49.75 tons.

Then multiply any of values above by 12 and you'll get appropriate tonnage limit for 12-mech company. 720, 700 (697.5 rounded up) or 600 (597.5 rounded up if you want to play poor Inner Sphere with few heavy/assault mechs).

720 tons means that you can either bring 12 Dragons or 7 Atlases + 1 Flea for spotting. Looks more balanced than 12 COM-2D on 3 Atlases. Underweight teams should be permitted as well, I think, so if you want to bring 12 Ravens instead of 12 Dragons, you can.

Edited by Morang, 11 April 2013 - 11:34 PM.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Alymbic, on 11 April 2013 - 09:58 PM, said:

You underestimate the power of my troll spider....

This?

[MustrumRidcully]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 12 April 2013 - 01:52 AM, said:

This?

Scary.

Not because of those quintessential anti-infantry guns. But because it's a Spider!

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 12 April 2013 - 01:59 AM.

[Khanublikhan]

Medium Mechs are supposed to be the work-horses of the BT battlefield, right?

Perhaps there should be some form of priority weighting as to which class of mechs get slotted into a game first?
(In addition to any consideration about Battle Values / Tonnage).

Highest Priority:

Medium Mechs (XX% ?)
Light Mechs (XX% ?)
Heavy Mechs (XX% ?)
Assault Mechs (XX% ?)

Lowest Priority:

Would that work?

[Kissamies]

Spiders! An entire legion of spiders!

[ssm]

Khanublikhan, on 12 April 2013 - 02:03 AM, said:

Medium Mechs are supposed to be the work-horses of the BT battlefield, right?

Perhaps there should be some form of priority weighting as to which class of mechs get slotted into a game first?
(In addition to any consideration about Battle Values / Tonnage).

Highest Priority:

Medium Mechs (XX% ?)
Light Mechs (XX% ?)
Heavy Mechs (XX% ?)
Assault Mechs (XX% ?)

Lowest Priority:

Would that work?

I always thought that 'Medium Problem' would be adressed in upcoming (or not? Didn't check for a while) Dropship Mode for CW.

Basically, for single engagement you could either choose fixed number of mechs of single weight category - e.g. 3 lights/3 mediums/2 heavies/2 assaults

or

You get tonnage limit for each drop (150 - 200 tons), and you can freely 'spend' it on mechs of diffrent weight categories (but with at least 1,5x weight modifier for lights, to balance things a little in favor of mediums)

Edited by ssm, 12 April 2013 - 02:42 AM.

[tenderloving]

Based on my experience with MechCommander, the proper solution to this would be the highest number of light mechs possible armed with LRMs. Then you micro them so that they constantly kite the chosen target and shed aggro when one of them is starting to get shot at. A couple of them might die in a large fight where you can't prevent them all from being hit by something, but losing one Commando and a Rookie Pilot out of 16 isn't that big a deal.

It gets boring really quick, but you do keep a Bushwhacker around because you leveled up one of your good pilots with Medium Mech Piloting Skill before you figured it out.

Edited by tenderloving, 12 April 2013 - 04:34 AM.

[Fajther]

I love the idea of a tonnage limit as well. Should be harsher. 250. maybe even 200. 300 is too much. 12 people is just crying for a all light team. How about 8 or 6, or possibly even 5. Because there is a advantage to running more players with the same tonnage.

[Joseph Mallan]

It's a good idea but the 300 limit is a bit restrictive.

[Drenzul]

Its a dumb limit.

A atlas is not four times as powerful as a commando, its pretty much that simple.

A decent small mech is more deadly than a poor assault in MWO, less true in other MW games, but weight is a far less important factor when deciding how powerful a vehicle is than other factors in MWO.

[Vellinious]

FupDup, on 11 April 2013 - 08:46 PM, said:

I would pay to watch 10 Spiders or 12 Streakmandos duke it out with 3 Atlai.

If the spider pilots are good, the assault mechs don't stand a chance.

[Zyllos]

Wouldn't it be better if you limited it to lances?

300 ton match, allowable 1 or 2 lances?

That would allow 4 Orions vs. 4 Commando & 2 Hunchbacks & 1 Centurion & 1 Trebuchet.

I would suspect the 4 Orions would be belown out of the water because lower tonnage mechs generally are more efficient with their tonnage use.

Edited by Zyllos, 12 April 2013 - 05:10 AM.

[3rdworld]

No a fan of tonnage limits for uneven teams. The way MWO works it would always be better to run the maximum number of mechs.

Tonnage limits for even teams? I am all for it.



Why oh why, they can't do a rotating tonnage limit for 8s is beyond my understanding.

Edited by 3rdworld, 12 April 2013 - 05:19 AM.