378 replies to this topic

[Bishop Steiner]

Thontor, on 25 April 2013 - 02:09 PM, said:

here's a pic from this great article: http://www.penny-arc...ricate-birth-of

it's clear from the notes that it's not the finished product... since they say to "reduce windshield size".. not sure if, or by how much, the windshield size was reduced for the final model

I'd also point out as someone who has worked around heavy earth movers most of his life.. if the pilot in that Catapult is to scale, the Cat is WELL north of 100 tons in that picture. Each of it's legs would mass nearly as much as that Jenner. (not to mention you could fit a jacuzzi and a couple of mech-bunnies in that cockpit, no sweat) The Jenner is actually pretty close to perfect.

thanks for re-digging this out, as I remember it being in one of my art posts about scale back in Closed Beta, before they nuked the forums the LAST time.

Edited by Bishop Steiner, 25 April 2013 - 02:31 PM.

[Keifomofutu]

Raalic, on 25 April 2013 - 01:39 PM, said:

Centurion and Trebuchet are definitely too big. Need to be narrower, at least. Considerably.

Every light is too small. Should be closer in size to Cicada, which I feel is about right for a 40-ton 'mech.

I actually agree with the extra small lights. They did it on purpose so they wouldn't get one-shotted too easily. But mediums have some of the same problems with none of the benefits lights receive. Its no wonder the meta is all heavies/assaults or lights.

Why bring a medium when it has all the disadvantages of a heavy with none of the advantages?

EDIT:Spelling gawd.

Edited by Keifomofutu, 25 April 2013 - 03:17 PM.

[Bishop Steiner]

Thontor, on 25 April 2013 - 02:32 PM, said:

we have to assume that whatever Battlemechs are made of, they are much lighter weight materials than used in today's "heavy earth movers"

when a machine gun weighs half a ton, and an autocannon 14, not sure I can agree!

And it still doesn't address the massive discrepancy between the Catapult and Jenner, as made of Lead, Play-Doh or Fairy Feathers, the Jenner literally about 1/4 of the mass of the catapult if we are comparing like materials and densities.

[DaZur]

Thontor, on 25 April 2013 - 03:09 PM, said:

297 in mediums

That's because you flatlanders drive like your arse hairs are on fire...

[Jonathan Paine]

As long as this thread is still continuing on, I'll add my own gripe about mech size. The light mechs are too small compared to, well, everything.
Volume of a Rectangular Prism side1 * side2 * side3
Imagine a boxed shaped mech (something squat and URBAN will do):
In order for it to have a volume of 25, we need to do multiply (roughly) 2.924 by 2.924 by 2.924. What happens if we double each unit? 5.848 by 5.848 by 5.848 equals 199.99, (or roughly 200)

Look at the Commando versus the Atlas... How much taller, wider and deeper is the Atlas than the Commando? A glimpse from page 3 of this thread shows that the Commando appears to be at most half the height of the Atlas, and less than half the depth. And yet, the Command weighs 25 tons to the Atlas' 100. Using the formula for volume (holding density steady), we would need the boxed edition of the Atlas to be at most 4.642 times 4.642 times 4.642.

What does that mean? Boxed Atlas would be 1.59 times taller, wider and deeper than boxed Commando. It clearly is not. And that bugs me. What about the Jenner? Pah, Jenner size is OP!

P.S.
How do you create a boxed Commando? You let a Trebuchet land on it. How do you box an Atlas? A whole lance of Highlanders lands on it

[Keifomofutu]

Thontor, on 25 April 2013 - 02:56 PM, said:

Because they can go faster, and aren't as fat, therefore not as easy to hit as a heavy.

plus they are the most fun of all the weight classes

Put up a picture of a centurion and cataphract. They will be exactly the same width across the shoulder where people aim. They will be exactly the same height. Cent will go maybe 10km/h faster than a cataphract. One of them will have the firepower of a heavy and one of them won't.

The xl heavys trample all over the medium's playstyle. And single 60 alpha from one of the assault boats can shear off cent's easy to hit side torso in one shot. And because hes as wide as cataphract that alpha will hit.

For this reason people often don't run xl engines in their centurion and thus don't go as fast or have as much firepower.

Resizing the meds lets them run xl engines more of the time and actually have both speed and firepower.

Edited by Keifomofutu, 25 April 2013 - 09:22 PM.

[Tennex]

imagine if you had a 4ft by 4ft plank. full of 1inch holes. that weighs 50 pounds. (using hypothetical measurements humor with me)

put it next to a 2ft by 2ft plank with 0 holes. but also weighing 50 pounds. which would be easier to hit?


the 4by4 with holes is larger and easier to hit. despite it being the same weight as the smaller plank. and occupying the same amount of space.


seriously how often does a person's shot go trhough the space between the cent's arms and torso where the awesome's extra weight would have filled in. very rare cuz guess what most of the time, that extra space is blocked by its arms.

Edited by Tennex, 25 April 2013 - 06:03 PM.

[DaZur]

One point to remember... and a Dev reminded me of this a while ago... "some" of the 3D design decisions are secondary to making the actual Mech viable in-game i.e... making concerted effort to make sure parts don't clip through other parts, there is some practical means to actually "fit" the proposed weaponry into various locations etc...

Edited by DaZur, 26 April 2013 - 06:25 AM.

[Bishop Steiner]

Jonathan Paine, on 25 April 2013 - 04:44 PM, said:

As long as this thread is still continuing on, I'll add my own gripe about mech size. The light mechs are too small compared to, well, everything.
Volume of a Rectangular Prism side1 * side2 * side3
Imagine a boxed shaped mech (something squat and URBAN will do):
In order for it to have a volume of 25, we need to do multiply (roughly) 2.924 by 2.924 by 2.924. What happens if we double each unit? 5.848 by 5.848 by 5.848 equals 199.99, (or roughly 200)

Look at the Commando versus the Atlas... How much taller, wider and deeper is the Atlas than the Commando? A glimpse from page 3 of this thread shows that the Commando appears to be at most half the height of the Atlas, and less than half the depth. And yet, the Command weighs 25 tons to the Atlas' 100. Using the formula for volume (holding density steady), we would need the boxed edition of the Atlas to be at most 4.642 times 4.642 times 4.642.

What does that mean? Boxed Atlas would be 1.59 times taller, wider and deeper than boxed Commando. It clearly is not. And that bugs me. What about the Jenner? Pah, Jenner size is OP!

P.S.
How do you create a boxed Commando? You let a Trebuchet land on it. How do you box an Atlas? A whole lance of Highlanders lands on it

I'd actually disagree. I think the Jenner is the perfect "real world" size. Now the Commando is close to questionable (especially for cramming cockpits into "heads"... the Stinger would be undrivable with current scaling). IMO, the rest of the mechs are simply too large, even the Atlas. Doubling weight in no ways doubles size, even in 2D, let alone 3D. I believe the Jenner is right around 8 meters which is about perfect, Commando and Spider Probably as "Humanoids" should be a smidge taller than it. A Hunchy should (Probably) be about 1/4 - 1/3 larger at max than the commando as the mech also is wider and deeper, and the Atlas should probably "real world" hit about 12 meters. Which funnily enough fits the scale CGL the owner of the properties uses (8-14 meters for Bipeds, and the Atlas being rather stocky, was NEVER the tallest of the Mechs anyhow)

Just my 2 cents. I don't have the Compu skill Adridos does for this, just going by IRL understanding of heavy equipment and 20 years doing art and learning a few things about scale and perspective.

[Banditman]

Allow me to bring this thought in from another thread:

Banditman, on 22 April 2013 - 11:25 AM, said:

This thread is bringing to light what the closed beta testers were saying back in June of last year: MWO has a problem with scale.

The mechs, all of the mechs, are completely inconsistent in scale. The Stalker is the poster child for this. Based on weight, it should be very nearly the size of an Atlas.

I think Alex does a fantastic job in creating the MWO concepts for these mechs, but somewhere along the lines, the translation of size gets completely screwed up. In other words, each mech taken individually looks great, but compared to each other, things are a mess.

Dear PGI, here's how to fix this problem in 5 easy steps:

1. To me, I think the Hunchback is probably the closest to "right" as far as scale goes. It really doesn't matter which mech is chosen, but you need to figure out which mech has it's scale "right" and use that as a base. One you have chosen the "base" . . .

2. Compute the in game volume of that mech. It cannot be that hard.

3. Take the weight of the mech, divide by volume. Presto! Density.

4. Now you have the density of a well proportioned mech. You know the weight of all the mechs. Shrink or expand the volume of each model in game until they all have identical density.

5. Thank Banditman, perhaps in the form of MC.

[General Taskeen]

Banditman, on 26 April 2013 - 09:19 AM, said:

Allow me to bring this thought in from another thread:

*PGI Awards 25,000MC to Banditman

[Innocent]

I like the idea of using volume to create a scale. Use the volume of an Atlas as a baseline, then a Hunchback should have 50% of that volume, an Awesome should be 80%. Do this for all of the designs. This way there would be less complaints since it is based on a formula instead of being subjective.

[Bishop Steiner]

Innocent, on 26 April 2013 - 11:33 AM, said:

I like the idea of using volume to create a scale. Use the volume of an Atlas as a baseline, then a Hunchback should have 50% of that volume, an Awesome should be 80%. Do this for all of the designs. This way there would be less complaints since it is based on a formula instead of being subjective.

one issue with volume is mass is not consistent. A multitube missile launcher and an Autocannon, with a single heavy barrel, will not take up the same space even if they are the same mass. a 50 ton mech with a 14 ton autocannon, the actual "chassis" would be smaller than a 50 ton mech with say, 5 tons of weapons. I think volume would be part of the equation, but only part. And one thing that would be a good start is to have all the weapons scaled to consistent size, and then the mechs built "around" that, so to speak.

[syngyne]

If anything they should be scaled around their cockpits, since the pilot's size is(hopefully) constant.

[Echo6]

I just see the puny enemy mechs and smash them all!

[Tincan Nightmare]

The funniest thing about scale and size is the AC20's mounted on the Hunch and the Atlas. Why is the Hunch's hunch so much larger than the 'tiny' AC (in comparison) mounted on the Atlas? Be a much harder to hit 'hunch' if it was carrying the same make of AC as the Atlas (the Kali Yama AC must be a big fat *** compared to the Defiance Mech Hunter AC, maybe its cast from bronze).

The biggest problem to me is lights, just because they come off as Protomechs to me, buzzing around at most of the other mechs waistline. I mean in the TT a Commando could punch an Atlas (fairly stupid move, but it COULD happen not SHOULD happen) and there is no difference on the to hit table if the Atlas punches back (why its a stupid move). Yet the Commando as modeled wouldn't be able to even reach the Atlas' head (though that was a possible result of the hit roll). Yah I know that it was a decision to make lights more viable (as was making them turn on a dime at 100+ kph) but it just bugs me to see them turned into proto Protomechs.

[Bishop Steiner]

Tincan Nightmare, on 26 April 2013 - 10:01 PM, said:

The funniest thing about scale and size is the AC20's mounted on the Hunch and the Atlas. Why is the Hunch's hunch so much larger than the 'tiny' AC (in comparison) mounted on the Atlas? Be a much harder to hit 'hunch' if it was carrying the same make of AC as the Atlas (the Kali Yama AC must be a big fat *** compared to the Defiance Mech Hunter AC, maybe its cast from bronze).

The biggest problem to me is lights, just because they come off as Protomechs to me, buzzing around at most of the other mechs waistline. I mean in the TT a Commando could punch an Atlas (fairly stupid move, but it COULD happen not SHOULD happen) and there is no difference on the to hit table if the Atlas punches back (why its a stupid move). Yet the Commando as modeled wouldn't be able to even reach the Atlas' head (though that was a possible result of the hit roll). Yah I know that it was a decision to make lights more viable (as was making them turn on a dime at 100+ kph) but it just bugs me to see them turned into proto Protomechs.

the Hunchbacks Kali-Yama

[Roland]

Neolisk, on 23 April 2013 - 05:07 PM, said:

Stalker does not have arm actuators - this is a major drawback from the other chassis you mentioned.

It does not need more nerfing.

Not having lower arm actuators is actually beneficial in most cases, in mwo.

[Gremlich Johns]

Well, if the Raven can take an XL engine that an Atlas can......

[Keifomofutu]

Gremlich Johns, on 27 April 2013 - 12:37 PM, said:

Well, if the Raven can take an XL engine that an Atlas can......

At its current size raven should look like an engine with legs and a seat nailed to the top.