213 replies to this topic

[Deathlike]

I don't think the medium class is that "crippled" in the sense that it isn't good at all. The issue IMO is that most of the meds in use are on the "heavier side" (50 tons) and there isn't anything available on the 45 ton front.. and the Cicada truly is the overweight Light.

Mediums could certainly benefit from bigger engines... especially the Hunchies (allow them a max of 275 engine) and scale some of the others as necessary (Cents for a 300 engine for instance).

I would say that this issue has more to do with the lesser lack of "cheese" than you could do with other/bigger mechs and that's not necessarily a bad thing here.

[Sahoj]

I still play almost exclusively medium mechs and I still love it.
HBK-4H with 4 Medium Lasers/AC20. 76kph

CN9-YLW with an AC20/2 Medium Lasers. 88kph

The CN9-YLW functions as a flanker to shimmy out tough shots when my lance is composed of larger, hard hitting mechs. Sometimes you have to get elevation and shoot at diverse angles when you're following an Atlas into the nasty.

The HBK-4H sees more action when my lance is lacking in the beef department and I need to lay down some firepower.

The CN9-YLW is more of an all around but suffers from over reliance on the right arm.

The HBK-4H is built with its history in mind of being a rugged/city area terrain brawler and still joyfully screaming, "Head laser!" when everything else has been knocked off.

Of course - I usually play in premades and our movements are a little bit coordinated which can allow relevant play from non-jump snipers.

The best thing with weight-matching, even in its lesser form is that I can deny the opponents a potential heavy/assault slot and still play my favorite mechs.

Edited by Sahoj, 11 May 2013 - 05:03 PM.

[Kiiyor]

Mediums do need... something. I run heavies and assaults, so medium mechs are my meat. My tasty, tasty meat. I don't see them as the threat they used to be. I don't even fear the 4SP and zombie Cent anymore, and those things in the hands of competent pilots were industrial strength mech peelers.

We need low tonnage short range weapons that can compete with the long range pinpoint nightmare of the PPC (and Gauss, to lesser extent). The humble SRM used to be an instrument of fear, but now all the other weapons tease it and make sure it gets picked last at any weapon sporting events.

[jeffsw6]

Mediums annoy me when they are red; but I often notice they are ******* worthless when they're blue. Why? Many medium pilots in PUGs won't do things like base capture, scout, or fend off enemy fast-mechs; and instead are pretty much Ramboing on their own. That's fine if they actually are Rambo and can do some good, or if my team isn't short on fast-moving mechs.

Mediums need to know that their role varies depending on the composition of their team, and play whatever role is needed. If they don't, their team is crippled by their worthless presence.

[Livewyr]

you know why the medium class fails right now?

player blob mentality, heavies and assaults blob around with long range weapons and ridicule any player that thinks differently... like leaving the group.


wanna bring back mediums? start capping bases... go for the throat. they'll start thinking lighter, out they'll get bored hugging the base.

[FrostCollar]

Mediums would be well served by a size change, especially the Centurion.

The main problem mediums have is that they're substantially similar in size to heavier mechs, but don't have the armor. So they are probably the easiest mechs to destroy with high alpha builds. Lights are small and fast at least, so they've got a somewhat better shot.

Livewyr, on 11 May 2013 - 07:45 PM, said:

you know why the medium class fails right now?

player blob mentality, heavies and assaults blob around with long range weapons and ridicule any player that thinks differently... like leaving the group.


wanna bring back mediums? start capping bases... go for the throat. they'll start thinking lighter, out they'll get bored hugging the base.

I disagree - the problems with mediums are structural and not psychological. I've never seen any heavies and assaults ridicule a medium that leaves the group. I have seen them get gunned down by heavy mechs that they can't outshoot and can't effectively outmanuever fast enough. Once you're in PPC range you've got a long way to run until you're safe.

The base agrument is troublesome because any capping job a medium can do a light can do better, and once that hornet's nest is kicked they're better at escaping too.

The medium is supposed to be a happy medium of firepower and manuverability. However, right now they seem to represent a dead zone between heavies and lights instead. I'm not sure how to fix that.

[Deathlike]

jeffsw6, on 11 May 2013 - 05:47 PM, said:

Mediums annoy me when they are red; but I often notice they are ******* worthless when they're blue. Why? Many medium pilots in PUGs won't do things like base capture, scout, or fend off enemy fast-mechs; and instead are pretty much Ramboing on their own. That's fine if they actually are Rambo and can do some good, or if my team isn't short on fast-moving mechs.

Mediums need to know that their role varies depending on the composition of their team, and play whatever role is needed. If they don't, their team is crippled by their worthless presence.

I don't mind scouting when I'm in a Cent-D. I mind when the "supposed scouts" (aka, most light mechs) don't do that.

Mediums do need an overall speed buff.. in the sense that they have no real speed differentiation from heavies. They're only ~10kph faster than heavies (outside of the Dragon, which is a big "medium mech").. so if the medium's average top speed (outside of the Cicada) is closer to 100kph instead of 90kph, it probably would benefit the medium class as a whole.

[Livewyr]

for the same reason you don't face off against an atlas with a cataphract, you don't face off with heavier mechs with mediums. medium is supposed to bring more firepower than a light, but be faster than a heavy. use them to support lights. they can't keep up, but they can set up a FOB for a light to run back to if he's getting harassed by enemy lights.

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

Anecdotal evidence is the best kind, so here's some from me:

Around a month back all I ever seemed to see were assaults and heavies with JJs and PPC/erPPC/Gauss, barring the odd Stalker with 6LL or 6PPC or whatever. I stubbornly kept playing brawler Atlases and such, but my medium mech play pretty well died for a while. Lately, however, I've been seeing a whole bunch of mediums, including the much-maligned Hunchbacks. I myself have had lots of success lately playing my Hunchbacks, to the point where they're competitive with my assaults.

If I had to guess, I'd say that the tournament, with its rewards for all four weight classes, really helped to diversify mech weights. Sure, lots of people tried to make mini-Highlanders with their Trebuchets, but plenty of others were more inventive and had lots of success. Then there's the example set by Koreanese and his 4P, which may well have been a key factor in the resurgence of medium pilots I've been seeing lately.

There may well be a boredom factor, as well, with people getting fatigued by all the PPC spam and moving on to different builds. Assaults still seem to be heavy on the PPC and Gauss spam, of course, and lots of medium and light drivers seem to be trying to imitate their larger, slower enemies (whatever killed me must be OP so I'll use it too), but I'm reasonably sure that I've been seeing a good bit more build diversity of late.

As for my own medium mechs, ignoring the Cicadas I picked up this weekend, I have been running Hunchbacks with 250 or 260 standard engines and doing great with them. I've got 4G, 4P, and 4SP builds and I've been both enjoying and succeeding with all three. Whether this is because I started playing more cautiously and have since been far less prone to being one-shot-sniped by PPC boats or whether it's due to increased build variety I can't say definitively, but one way or another I've been finding the meta to be far more medium-friendly than it has been for quite some time.

[Ralgas]

I see more than my share of med's around, but you're right they are becoming a dying breed.

What we need is for CW to hurry up and get here and tonnage matching to be a modifier on rewards.

R&R fails in that respect as it's only going to encourage ppc stalkers and poptarts given the defensive style they play (fire and stay/pop back into cover quickly). Dropping as a full assault lance but getting penalized as a result of having a 100+ tons bonus in weight will encourage more diversity, at least until the end gamers max out content.

Edited by Ralgas, 11 May 2013 - 08:31 PM.

[Keifomofutu]

The thing mediums are really lacking right now is evasiveness. Not the light brand of evasiveness where they are literally too fast to shoot while they zigzag but more of a sense that the mediums aren't letting you get a clear shot at all and even if you hit them it should be hard to hit a certain location.

This is due to a combination of poorly designed frontal profiles and overrestrictive engine limits for centurion and hunchback.

You shouldn't see a trebuchet at 800 meters and briefly confuse it with a highlander. You also shouldn't see a cent and a cataphract standing side by side and figure that either would be just as easy to shoot. Mediums should be physically distinctive.
They shouldn't be as easy to confuse with heavies as they are now. A medium should be designed so that it would be very hard to focus fire a specific part of the mech.

And some of the engine limits need to go up. If you are going to let virtually every heavy mech go 80km/h then there is no justifiable reason to restrict any of the mediums to less than 100km/h. A max speed hunchback goes exactly 6km/h faster than a max speed cataphract. That's pathetic.

Edited by Keifomofutu, 12 May 2013 - 11:23 AM.

[Appogee]

I have to agree with the OP.

I prefer running Mediums, but I've given up on them in favour of heavies at the moment. It's the only way I can get enough CBills. Mediums just go down too quickly at the moment.

The difference is Conquest. But running around from cap point to cap point, not engaging the enemy, is not much fun.

[strygalldwir]

My Hunch4p still gets a regular run. But only on conquest. A med pilot with eyes on the mini map can cap and kill enemy lights at the same time. Especially on the small maps.

[armyof1]

My best medium is by far my DRG-1C, since it can move at similar or even higher speeds than the poor HBKs, have more armor and can carry bigger guns. Yesterday I was getting kind of bored with getting almost all my kills with dual PPCs at 500m or so and got myself my first Cent with some lasers and srms, but man is it way harder to do well in it with all the PPCs flying around you. For a moment I almost slapped a couple of PPCs in the right arm of the 9AL because I'm certain it would have upped my performance considerably, but stopped myself as it would mean I'd be playing in the same manner I was already bored with. It can still be fun when you have some others in your team who also have shorter range builds you can team up with (which you don't see often), or end up in 1 on 1 vs a light or another medium. But in no way can I get the same amount of success I see in my DRG-1C, and really that is something that needs to be fixed somehow.

[peve]

It's the maps and objectives.

If we get more large maps and a variety of different objectives -> mediums have a point.

They were never ment to do toe to toe with assalts / strong heavies.

Dragon is a heavy, but some consider it a medium. I do well in mine. Uac5, srm6, 4mlas, XL360. It can flank, cap, evade and even snipe. Although it also suffers from lucky alphas. Especially in river city you can almost get cored 10 secs from the start.

[jeffsw6]

peve, on 11 May 2013 - 11:17 PM, said:

It's the maps and objectives.

I endorse this message.

[Deathlike]

armyof1, on 11 May 2013 - 10:44 PM, said:

My best medium is by far my DRG-1C, since it can move at similar or even higher speeds than the poor HBKs, have more armor and can carry bigger guns. Yesterday I was getting kind of bored with getting almost all my kills with dual PPCs at 500m or so and got myself my first Cent with some lasers and srms, but man is it way harder to do well in it with all the PPCs flying around you. For a moment I almost slapped a couple of PPCs in the right arm of the 9AL because I'm certain it would have upped my performance considerably, but stopped myself as it would mean I'd be playing in the same manner I was already bored with. It can still be fun when you have some others in your team who also have shorter range builds you can team up with (which you don't see often), or end up in 1 on 1 vs a light or another medium. But in no way can I get the same amount of success I see in my DRG-1C, and really that is something that needs to be fixed somehow.

The Dragon is the posterchild of why Mediums need a engine buff. Dragons are overweight Mediums, yet the YLW with a 300 engine compares to a Dragon's 360 engine.

The fact that the average Centurion (A and AL) is SLOWER than the Dragon, it deserves some serious attention.

Edited by Deathlike, 11 May 2013 - 11:50 PM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Mediums are surprisingly large, which makes them easy to target.
They are usually still notably slower than lights. This makes it difficult for them to escape incoming fire. Their armour is better than that of lights, but things like Dual AC/20 Jagermechs or 3PPC+Gauss Rifle Highlanders deal enough damage to make this irrelevant - you need to evade the shot, not soak it.
A light mech running away from a batlte with a non-Dragon Heavy or an Assault will not give many opportunities to be shot, a Medium however will. And is a larger target, too.

Adjusting mech sizes might help a bit. How do deal witht he speed differences, I am not sure. It might help if those large damage alpha strikes were harder to do (lower the heat cap, change convergence, or whatever). Still, not sure that's enough for Mediums.
Maybe they need some completely lore-defying buff, like having a 50 % bonus to internal armour. (This basically makes them have similar hit points to some heavy mechs, but at no weight cost...)

[Ookisaru]

Perhaps part of the solution could be to provide c-bill incentives to play underrepresented weight classes.

The idea here would be that the server would track how much each weight class is being played and provide a c-bill bonus / penalty for unpopular and popular weight classes. The current bonus / penalty for each weight class of mech would be displayed on the main screen before you launch meaning players have a choice (for example) as to whether they use their over-represented assault with a - 17% c-bill penalty, or drop in an underrepresented medium for a + 15% bonus. Ideally the bonuses / penalties would also regularly update to reflect changes in the proportional representation of various classes of mech in order to avoid "over promoting" an unpopular weight range.

While this would not necessarily fix all of the balance issues, it might at least give people some reason to play objectively weaker mechs leading to more varied and interesting games.

[Livewyr]

It's not PGI or the mediums..

It's the player base. Start weening people off TDM and get them to start thinking about offense, defense, and a maneuver game.. then your medium will be important again.

Cap like a **** until they start thinking of mediums as important for defense and counter-maneuvers.