32 replies to this topic

[One Medic Army]

Hellcat420, on 26 April 2013 - 06:38 PM, said:

your saying medium mechs should be able to 1v1 heavy and assault mechs?

Well light mechs can, heavy mechs can, assault mechs can.
Why should mediums be the only ones that can't?

TOGSolid, on 26 April 2013 - 07:35 PM, said:

Tonnage limits fix this problem and they're confirmed as going on in so I'm not quite sure why this is still being brought up.

This won't solve anything.
For one simple reason: any day of the week a Jenner/Raven-3L will be more advantageous to have than a hunch or trebuchet.
The cent has zombie mode going for it, but it's really hurting from the current SRM state.

I've played matches where we were down significant tonnage to the enemy due to having lights, we won because of the lights, if we had mediums instead we would probably have lost.

Edited by One Medic Army, 28 April 2013 - 11:23 PM.

[Zyllos]

One Medic Army, on 28 April 2013 - 11:18 PM, said:

Well light mechs can, heavy mechs can, assault mechs can.
Why should mediums be the only ones that can't?




This won't solve anything.
For one simple reason: any day of the week a Jenner/Raven-3L will be more advantageous to have than a hunch or trebuchet.
The cent has zombie mode going for it, but it's really hurting from the current SRM state.

I've played matches where we were down significant tonnage to the enemy due to having lights, we won because of the lights, if we had mediums instead we would probably have lost.

The only reason why that is the case is due to weapon convergence.

When fighting a light, unless you have weapons that deal a lot of damage in a single hit (PPC, AC/10, AC/20, ect), then damage is going to spread all over the Light mech.

But when a Light fights another mech larger than it, most of the damage is going onto a single location most of the time. This is why Lights are favored against Mediums because you can easily get damage onto a Medium where you want it. It's much harder to do this against a Light.

So, in essence, that Light has much more armor than the Medium due to how easy it is to hit locations against a moving target.

[Star Captain Obvious Kerensky]

Whenever I see 'Teamwork' used in balance discussions, it is almost always under the assumption that the enemy team doesn't use teamwork at all.

I think I've seen this particular example a hundred times in the last two weeks:

Q: Poptarts are too powerful. They enjoy too much firepower with too little risk!

A: Form a firing line and have your whole team kill the poptart mech as soon as he pops up!

The problem with this thinking is that their solution to defeating a tactic performed by a single player is teamwork; without accounting for the enemy player using teamwork himself. Statements like this are essentially saying "The solution to that one guy beating you 1v1 is to make the fight 1v8!".

If you're going to talk balance problems, teamwork needs to be excluded from the discussion to retain the 1v1 comparison, or assume both teams are equally coordinated and skilled at teamwork. Anything else is ignorance of intellectually dishonest.

Edit: Similarly, Anecdotes are equally worthless when it comes to balance discussion. Just because YOU are successful with a particular piece of equipment, that doesn't automatically mean its balanced. How skilled was your enemy? would you have been more effective if you used a different weapon? Were you taking fire from the enemy at all? To use an extreme example: My Quad MG Spider has no problem killing a mech packing nothing but LRMs, but that doesn't mean the Machine Gun is an effective killing machine.

Edited by Eldragon, 29 April 2013 - 06:36 AM.

[Star Captain Obvious Kerensky]

I think the Larger maps (Tourmaline/Alpine) hurt mediums and fast heavies more than tonnage matching. On other maps, moving 85-120 kph was fast enough to return to base or get into excellent flanking positions quickly.

However on the massive maps anything less than 130 kph is simply too slow to be effective at stopping lights from back-capping and harassing the enemy line and escaping safely.

[Zyllos]

Eldragon, on 29 April 2013 - 05:57 AM, said:

I think the Larger maps (Tourmaline/Alpine) hurt mediums and fast heavies more than tonnage matching. On other maps, moving 85-120 kph was fast enough to return to base or get into excellent flanking positions quickly.

However on the massive maps anything less than 130 kph is simply too slow to be effective at stopping lights from back-capping and harassing the enemy line and escaping safely.

Not sure about being too slow. I have a CN9-D that moves 90.8kph and I seem to defend the back capping well enough. Usually the issue is that once I get there to defend, there is multiple lights, I am already damaged, or whatever.

Your first statement about teamplay is spot on.

[Joseph Mallan]

Victor Morson, on 27 April 2013 - 04:12 AM, said:

Anyone who thought they could balance mediums with everything else in the game while adhering to BattleTech rules was insane. Their only option is to break with canon entirely if they wanted that.

No, they need to add tonnage/BV into match making, so the strength of a medium is freeing total team tonnage.

Medium Mechs are not suppose to be stand out Mechs. They are middle of the road War Machines, capable of performing multiple roles. In such they are doing their job well.

[NRP]

I think mediums were hit pretty hard by the SRM nerf (as were a lot of mechs). Let's wait until that is sorted out before getting our panties in a twist.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

I think this issue can be traced back to the same problem that causes a lot of the issues currently plaguing this game.

Static spawn points.

We spawn in the same places and we fight in the same places.

Medium mechs and light mechs might have a better role if scouting was necessary.

If we had a map with dynamic base spawns, and dynamic mech drop points; you would need to send out some lights and mediums to find the enemy and the enemy base. Otherwise your heavies/assaults may go the completely wrong direction.

And odds are the mediums/lights are going to be fighting other mediums/lights. Which makes it more viable.

[MaddMaxx]

Deathlike, on 27 April 2013 - 12:07 AM, said:

I thought Teamwork was OP.

It is. Every time a Team works together, they tend to Over Power the Team that does not.

[MaddMaxx]

Nicholas Carlyle, on 29 April 2013 - 09:52 AM, said:

I think this issue can be traced back to the same problem that causes a lot of the issues currently plaguing this game.

Static spawn points.

We spawn in the same places and we fight in the same places.

Medium mechs and light mechs might have a better role if scouting was necessary.

If we had a map with dynamic base spawns, and dynamic mech drop points; you would need to send out some lights and mediums to find the enemy and the enemy base. Otherwise your heavies/assaults may go the completely wrong direction.

And odds are the mediums/lights are going to be fighting other mediums/lights. Which makes it more viable.

And I don't see why we "always" have to start at our base. It would be cool if the "scouts" had to deploy early just to find "our" base in order for everyone to know where to go to defend it.

[TruePoindexter]

Isn't it a bit of a logical fallacy to not include teamwork in balance discussions? Playing devils advocate here but we look at mechs to fill specific roles and those roles are most definitely not comparable without bringing teammates into play. Support roles such as the ever popular sniper could not operate without their teams whether or not they were an assault mech or medium mech.

I do think that mediums are not in a great spot right now. They don't have the armor to weather much fire and most don't have the mobility to stay out of the way. Many of the popular mediums were dependent on the power of SRMs which have taken a big hit as well. We still need to keep their interaction with other mechs in mind however as nothing in this game operates in a bubble.

[LordBraxton]

TruePoindexter, on 29 April 2013 - 10:16 AM, said:

Isn't it a bit of a logical fallacy to not include teamwork in balance discussions? Playing devils advocate here but we look at mechs to fill specific roles and those roles are most definitely not comparable without bringing teammates into play. Support roles such as the ever popular sniper could not operate without their teams whether or not they were an assault mech or medium mech.

I do think that mediums are not in a great spot right now. They don't have the armor to weather much fire and most don't have the mobility to stay out of the way. Many of the popular mediums were dependent on the power of SRMs which have taken a big hit as well. We still need to keep their interaction with other mechs in mind however as nothing in this game operates in a bubble.

Well I think the greatest example was in a previous post.

3 Phracts backing up an assault is way better than 3 mediums, every time.

The weight balancing system is still unreliable, especially in 8v8s

Basically an 86.6kph phract can do everything hunch\cents can do but better.

The only viable medium builds go 110-130kph and even then they are MASSIVE targets compared to lights, and carry similar firepower.

[TruePoindexter]

LordBraxton, on 30 April 2013 - 09:15 AM, said:

Well I think the greatest example was in a previous post.

3 Phracts backing up an assault is way better than 3 mediums, every time.

The weight balancing system is still unreliable, especially in 8v8s

Basically an 86.6kph phract can do everything hunch\cents can do but better.

The only viable medium builds go 110-130kph and even then they are MASSIVE targets compared to lights, and carry similar firepower.

I don't disagree that mediums are not in a great spot (see my comment on them). However I've crushed 4 assaults with a coordinated team of 4 lights (with HSR no less). It's overly simplistic to consider mechs in a bubble without considering their respective teams.

As for 8 vs 8s - unless something has changed when I was gone the game does no weight matching there. It's its own special situation.

Edited by TruePoindexter, 30 April 2013 - 10:19 AM.