106 replies to this topic

[Wintersdark]

This is really quite interesting. I'd no idea damage transfer worked this way, and will definitely change how I target Mechs as a result.

As to mediums... Until we have tonnage limits, they'll always be crap. Too slow, lightly armed and armored. It's sad, because I like mediums, but the offer nothing not done better with heavies or lights.

[joedawg39s]

Yep played around in the training grounds you are definitely right about this.

I feel so dirty now I've been using the Left side of my CTF-1X as a shield to protect my AC-20 side. Look how much arm joint I have left over.



That's about half of the LT that gets covered by the joint remnants.

Edited by joedawg39s, 26 May 2013 - 10:29 AM.

[One Medic Army]

Could have sworn that this was mentioned in the Reddit AMA a little bit ago, and the PGI staffer in question said it was on track to be fixed.

Edited by One Medic Army, 26 May 2013 - 10:49 AM.

[Bishop Steiner]

Hayashi, on 26 May 2013 - 07:33 AM, said:

The story

---

I think I've figured out why the centurion appears to be unkillable. It has everything to do with MWO's damage transference mechanic.

You see, the Centurion has huge arms which completely envelops the side torso, and huge side torsos which completely envelop the centre torso.

We have known for some time that Centurions appear to be nigh-unkillable after their arms have been blown off. I think I've found the reason.

Now, in Mechwarrior Online, there are two types of damage allocation. One is when you blow off a side torso, and the arm immediately has its health reduced to zero and blows off as well. The second is when you shoot a destroyed side torso... 50% of the damage will be transferred to the Centre Torso.

The fault here in the Centurion is that when the arm is blown off the hitbox of the arm is not blown off. It still exists, and it is still blocking the side torso hitbox. Now when you shoot the centurion from the side thinking to hit the side torso since it's arm is no longer there, the game still THINKS the arm is still there, so it transfers exactly half the damage to the side torso.

BUT! The side torso 50% transference mechanic still exists! Therefore, when you shoot the mech from the side again, this damage is halved, and halved again, and now your weapons will do exactly 1/4 of the damage they should. That is why it takes forever to kill a centurion!

The tests

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To blow a side torso (zero internal health) from full health from the front - 12 shots with a medium laser. To blow a side torso from full health from the side - 21 shots with a medium laser. To blow the centre torso from full health from the side after blowing off the side torso: 56 shots with a medium laser.

So in other words, if you were to shoot a centurion from exactly one side, it would take... about 100 shots with a medium laser to kill it from full health. That's 500 damage.Well, actually slightly more than that, because Testing Grounds mechs have deficient armor.

P.S. Font sizes changed to reflect relative values so as to reflect the absurdity. For your reference, 500 damage is sufficient to CT-core 5 Heavy mechs from full health.

Current interim solution

---

Until a fix is implemented, shoot between the centurion's legs. That area counts as Centre Torso no matter how they turn their upper body.

Other applications

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Stalkers have effectively double the CT armour if shot from the side after the Side Torso is blown off. And since the Stalker has a very long... erm... centre torso, most of the time you're facing its side. So when you shoot it, most of the time you're actually dealing only half the damage you should. That's why Stalkers appear to live longer than Atlases - because Atlases have a very easy-to-hit Centre Torso from even the side, whereas the only way to hit a stalker's CT is usually if it's aiming directly at you... not a good situation for you. Again, shoot between the Stalker's legs to fix this.

This was also the reason why Ravens used to be impossible to kill, and now are very hard to kill on the torso. The arm is shielding the side torso - which means that shooting the side torso as it passes with its side facing you always dealt 1/2 expected damage. This makes the Raven seem like it's very easy to leg in comparison why is why many players have always been legging it... but it was never the case that the legs were weak, but it was that the rest of the Raven was too strong.

Light mechs in general present you with the side profile nearly all the time, unless they're shooting you. I didn't test all the light mechs by shooting them from the side, I'm sure someone might want to, but the thing is that if its arm hitbox wasn't eliminated, shooting them from the side would always do 1/2 health.

Perhaps those players 4 months ago who remarked that it seemed like light mechs have doubled armor were actually completely right.

This whole ST shielding nonsense isn't a factor when we consider slow mechs who turn slowly since you have a lot of time to shoot them. Whereas any mech that can turn fast can in that turning motion instantly reduce any damage you deal to a fraction of what it should have been... which makes all fast mechs necessarily overpowered.

And lastly, this is why if you shoot the leg of a mech after you already destroy the leg, you will take forever to kill it. The damage is first transferred to the side torso at 50% rate, then transferred to the centre torso at 25% rate, if you keep shooting the destroyed leg. Whereas if you shoot the other leg it will blow in seconds.

Recommended fix

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Not-so-preferred:
Completely remove the arm hitbox the moment the arm is blown off. Other mechs like Dragons and Catapults don't have this 'eternal arm' issue. Also, change the system such that shooting a destroyed leg will transfer damage to the other leg, rather than to the side torso it's attached to as per the MW4 system.

OR

Preferred:
Remove this 50% allocation mechanism from the game completely, and allocate full damage to the next component once one component is destroyed.

---

---

Until this damage allocation problem is fixed, the chassis will never be balanced correctly because the same weapons don't do the same damage on different targets. This has made the Centurion completely broken ever since its inception, and we can fix it now.

Once all of the mechs finally have this annoying damage allocation bug fixed, we'll no longer see absurd situations like JR7-F dueling an Atlas head-on and winning with >50% health to spare.

Thank you.

I prefer to think it's just cuz us Centrion Pilots are just better than the rest of you......... HomoSapiens Parabellum, as it were.

Sad to think that maybe Centy's are just bugged bottom feeders like the Raven-3L was.

Of course, since the only one I Drive is my Wang (still love my D, but with the current Meta, have not dusted it off in a while), I don't overall get the Zombie benefit, since a Slow Wang is a dead Wang, and when I lose my arms, 2 Medium Pulses aren't THAT dangerous.

Edited by Bishop Steiner, 26 May 2013 - 11:00 AM.

[Jman5]

One Medic Army, on 26 May 2013 - 10:48 AM, said:

Could have sworn that this was mentioned in the Reddit AMA a little bit ago, and the PGI staffer in question said it was on track to be fixed.

It was, sort of:
http://www.reddit.co...ctor_of/c9law6h

They are aware of damage transfer issue, but they make no mention of the fact that some mechs have vastly superior damage reduction ability than others. Nor do they say they will change anything, only that they are looking into it.

Edited by Jman5, 26 May 2013 - 11:02 AM.

[Yiazmat]

it's the 50% damage transfer from side torsos to center torso. working as intended.

[Koniving]

Yiazmat, on 26 May 2013 - 12:48 PM, said:

it's the 50% damage transfer from side torsos to center torso. working as intended.

That much is. But it's 50% of the 50% damage to the side torso being dealt to the CT. That's 25% damage due to the residual arm joints.

[Kaeb Odellas]

Meanwhile, the Hunchback gets none of this protection since its arms are freaking tiny.

I wish they would re-allocate some of the max armor from the arms to its enormous RT. It's annoying that so much of the hunchback's firepower is concentrated on such an enormously easy target

[oldradagast]

Of course, if the medium mechs were sized properly (and tonnage limits added), they could fix this problem without basically removing medium mechs from the game.

[syngyne]

Kaeb Odellas, on 26 May 2013 - 01:01 PM, said:

Meanwhile, the Hunchback gets none of this protection since its arms are freaking tiny.

I wish they would re-allocate some of the max armor from the arms to its enormous RT. It's annoying that so much of the hunchback's firepower is concentrated on such an enormously easy target

If anything, it'd nice to see HBKs get something like a 10% damage resistance to their hunch as a quirk. Or some amount that still makes the hunch a vulnerability, but not an instant death sentence.

Edited by syngyne, 27 May 2013 - 10:26 AM.

[LordBraxton]

Are you suggesting we nerf....

a medium??

without jump jets?!??!

HAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHA

plz don't use your moderator influence to ruin a mech that is already struggling

this same damage mitigation effect happens on other chassis as well

it would happen a TON on lights if they didnt use XLs

Ive seen it happen on a spider with a standard engine, the thing soaked up PPCs\ACs for a full minute while its CT slowly turned red

Edited by LordBraxton, 27 May 2013 - 10:28 AM.

[Sug]

Very interesting.

[Padic]

This strikes me less as a bug and more as some important insight into how the game works.

Compared to the alternatives, this seems like a reasonable solution for PGI to have implemented.

EDIT: Wait, unless damage to a destroyed side torso is still being transferred to a destroyed arm? That, of course, would be BS. Damage dealt to a destroyed side torso should deal 50% to the CT, not 25% to the CT and 25% to the arm. But I'm perfectly comfortable with shots to the detritus of a destroyed arm dealing 25% damage to the CT.

Edited by Padic, 27 May 2013 - 04:51 PM.

[Kmieciu]

I remember the times when there was no damage transfer whatsoever. And in order to destroy the center torso you had to hit the center torso :-) DUH!

Damage transfer is not a bug - it is a feature that was introduced during closed beta and it's working exactly like in patch notes: 50% reduction per component. If your leg is destroyed, then 50% of the damage is transferred to the side torso. If both your leg and the side torso are destroyed, then shots hitting your leg transfer 25% to the center torso.

If it was up to me, damage transfer would only occur if the shot penetrated the limb and struck the center torso. But I'm not sure if the Cryengine supports that feature.

Centurion has better hit boxes, Hunchback has better hard points. They are nicely balanced as it is.

EDIT:


Closed Beta Update #2
Upcoming Patch - Tuesday June 19th @ 10AM EST – 1PM PST

• Damage Transfer:
  
  • Attacking a destroyed component will now transfer the damage inwards to the next component.
    
  • Damage transferred in this manner is reduced by 50% for each component it passes through.

Edited by Kmieciu, 28 May 2013 - 03:28 AM.

[Hayashi]

LordBraxton, on 27 May 2013 - 10:27 AM, said:

Are you suggesting we nerf....

a medium??

without jump jets?!??!

HAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHA

plz don't use your moderator influence to ruin a mech that is already struggling

this same damage mitigation effect happens on other chassis as well

it would happen a TON on lights if they didnt use XLs

Ive seen it happen on a spider with a standard engine, the thing soaked up PPCs\ACs for a full minute while its CT slowly turned red

I am suggesting we fix what I feel is a bug, which is exactly our job as gamer beta testers. To find bugs, propose fixes, and let the devs fix it. Fixing it would merely turn a Centurion's survivability into a Hunchback... if the viability of a chassis was entirely based on its ability to benefit from a bug there are bigger issues here than just the bug which cannot even begin to be addressed until the bug is complete.

I still have a >1 kdr and wlr in the hunchback, my current mech... and the centurion is next on the list to be mastered. Hopefully after it's fixed. Release is in 3 months.

Kmieciu, on 28 May 2013 - 02:01 AM, said:

I remember the times when there was no damage transfer whatsoever. And in order to destroy the center torso you had to hit the center torso :-) DUH!

Damage transfer is not a bug - it is a feature that was introduced during closed beta and it's working exactly like in patch notes: 50% reduction per component. If your leg is destroyed, then 50% of the damage is transferred to the side torso. If both your leg and the side torso are destroyed, then shots hitting your leg transfer 25% to the center torso.

If it was up to me, damage transfer would only occur if the shot penetrated the limb and struck the center torso. But I'm not sure if the Cryengine supports that feature.

Centurion has better hit boxes, Hunchback has better hard points. They are nicely balanced as it is.

EDIT:


Closed Beta Update #2
Upcoming Patch - Tuesday June 19th @ 10AM EST – 1PM PST

• Damage Transfer:
  
  • Attacking a destroyed component will now transfer the damage inwards to the next component.
    
  • Damage transferred in this manner is reduced by 50% for each component it passes through.

If it really is working perfectly as intended and the centurion is meant to have an overpowered armour bonus over all other mediums based on a phantom arm, then I would like that they declare it so, and so be it. Then we'll know to concentrate our efforts into educating new players how to make use of/circumvent other players' usage of it.

Edited by Hayashi, 28 May 2013 - 07:25 AM.

[Lefty Lucy]

Mostly this just means that we all need to be better at shooting the CT, rather than letting our shots hit stumps.

[Padic]

Lefty Lucy, on 28 May 2013 - 09:18 AM, said:

Mostly this just means that we all need to be better at shooting the CT, rather than letting our shots hit stumps.

And learn what the destroyed arm profiles of various mechs are.

[Matroid]

Hit Boxes/transferring damage needs to be fixed to make all mechs equal. we all agree that centurions and stalkers seemed tougher than other mechs (some people throw ravens in the pile too). great find


*Bump*

[Trauglodyte]

Lefty Lucy, on 28 May 2013 - 09:18 AM, said:

Mostly this just means that we all need to be better at shooting the CT, rather than letting our shots hit stumps.

Padic, on 28 May 2013 - 09:46 AM, said:

And learn what the destroyed arm profiles of various mechs are.

I would say that this is acceptable and that, at least in my opinion, it is an opportunity for PGI to bring this into balance across all mechs thus allowing for more survivability for those mechs that need it. There are several mechs (ie, the Hunchy) whose upper arms are so tiny that it is more then possible to hit the torso with a full arm intact. This is one of those situations where all mechs should be created equally.

[Mikros04]

I think that this is working as intended, and hope will not be changed.

If I was sword fighting someone to the death, I would have to assume some diminishing returns when continually hacking the same wounded arm of my oppenent.