91 replies to this topic

[blinkin]

giganova, on 05 June 2013 - 10:46 AM, said:

I agree with the OP.

Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyroscope

and history repeats. gyroscopes maintain a reliable trajectory. i believe all of the NASA flights have them, BUT they ARE NOT some sort of magical inertial dampener that removes all vibration. watch any video of a shuttle launch. those guys get the crap shaken out of them.

tldr; gyroscope ONLY keeps you from falling over when you fly.

Edited by blinkin, 05 June 2013 - 11:10 AM.

[BlackBeltJones]

Loxx, on 04 June 2013 - 08:07 PM, said:

Many of the poptart haters have claimed that a continuous vectored thrust would cause "shake" in the vehicle while under the thrust load moment. Allow me to present the Harrier Jump Jet.

http://m.youtube.com...h?v=QVr671ceK9I

By all means please explain where the shake is?

It doesn't bother me that poptarting is practically dead. It was getting boring and honestly I was terrible at it. What I am worried about is the continuous dumbing down of the game with heavy handed nerfs because people would rather complain and create new physical laws out of thin air then engage their brain housing group and come up with creative methods to counter viable tactics. I just hope your happy with what the future is going to bring now that poptarts are gone.
Atlas online?
Splat / streak online?
LRM online?

We'll see. One thing I know, the goods will roll with the punches. The bads will keep trying to dumb down the game until it's Hello Kitty Online.

Even if this comparison was appropriate stability is not the original issue - though it appears shake and stability are now problems. Even a harrier jet would not be able to accurately place rounds (30mm or 50 cal) while hovering and any weapon discharge done while hovering would have a huge spread. I can say with certainty that my heart rate will have an effect on my rifle shooting and that slight movement causes a spread in grouping - now imagine a harrier pilot trying to center punch a target while hovering.

[BlackBeltJones]

Rippthrough, on 05 June 2013 - 03:50 AM, said:

Ah yes, because two legged 100 ton battlemechs running across rough terrain are known to be so easy to build and control you can buy them in a DIY kit from ebay for $10.


As for all these 'aerospace engineers' in here, talking about flight surfaces and wobbling and all that ****. You're the worst aerospace engineers in the bloody world then, because the reason the flight surfaces are going like mad and the plane is wobbling is because the plane is balanced on top of the thrust column.
It's centre of gravity is much higher than the point at which thrust is applied. Of course it's bloody unstable.

Most mechs have jumpjets on the torsos, way above where the centre of gravity would be, even halfway up the legs is an improvement over either of the aircraft, they also have far smaller profiles in the vertical axis so they would be far MORE stable than the aircraft.
Aerospace engineers that can't do basic physics, that's encouraging. I'll take the train.

WOW a real life mech engineer. I like how you call people and their ideas terrible then go on to express your knowledge of mech building and mech weight distribution.

[Shumabot]

I love how you people pretend this change, or anything involving this game at all has anything to do with physics.

This is a game where a 40 ton engine takes up the same space as an 8 ton one and I can get 800 10 foot long missiles from my foot to my shoulder missile rack, despite that taking up more space then my mech has in its entire body and there being NO CHANNEL for those giant missiles to travel along. This is a game where a laser capable of instantly melting (not blowing up, there's another piece of fake physics) massive steel constructs has a shorter range than a 45 millimeter pistol, and can shoot through water with no ill effect. This is a game where a projectile the size of a bus firing out of the tippy top shoulder of a man shaped object not only doesn't knock its platform down, it receives no recoil at all. This is a game where trees are indestructible ghostly objects, a 100 ton metal gorilla can walk up a sheer cliff, and shooting somethings giant vents do no more damage than shooting it in its giant shoulderpads.

This is idiotic. They added reticule shake because poptarting was a poison to the metagame, not for some sort of idiotic physics reason. Mechs don't even die when they fall a half mile, they don't even stumble.

[Shumabot]

Oh, also, gyroscopes on mechs makes no sense in the first place. The inertial forces are too large and varied and stability can't be achieved in them through reactive automatic counterbalancing. You also don't use gyroscopes to stabilize rockets, that's nonsense. Battletech was made by people who had no idea how machines worked.

Edited by Shumabot, 05 June 2013 - 11:45 AM.

[Livewyr]

Food for thought:

Heaviest Harrier, at Maxium Take-off weight = 5 Tons short of a "Flea.".

[DaZur]

Loxx, on 04 June 2013 - 08:07 PM, said:

Many of the poptart haters have claimed that a continuous vectored thrust would cause "shake" in the vehicle while under the thrust load moment. Allow me to present the Harrier Jump Jet.

Pretty simple really... The Harrier utilizes diverted thrust that is incremental allowing for granular thrust control.

As decided in canon the J-Jets issue a focused burst of max thrust (It's either on or off with no granular adjustment).

Watch a capsule camera on a manned rocket or shuttle launch vid... the shake is nothing like the smooth cruise in a Harrier.

[Flyby215]

This is a funny thread!

Based on observation, I would think that "rocketry" be a more useful field of study to the flight characteristics of battlemechs as opposed to aircraft aerodynamics... but alas I am less than useless since my degree is in aviation technology.

I can be the pilot, not the engineer ... ...

[Purlana]

You can have pop tarting back, but if you fall fast enough you instantly get legged or fall prone. Deal?

Edited by Purlana, 05 June 2013 - 12:42 PM.

[AntharPrime]

SirLANsalot, on 04 June 2013 - 09:09 PM, said:

Poptarting, been around since 1999 (MW3)

Its nothing new, it was around for a long time. In CB it happened, but no one whined about it then, but we only had cats and jenners and a raven that had them. It was a non issue all the way until the true JJ master showed up, the highlander, then it somehow, magically.....like overnight, became the new battle-cry for the trolls.

JJ sniping happened in CB, and they were laughed off the field by LRM's and SRM's, and anything with a gauss (the K2 times). Its like one mech changed it, and another one will do it again. Nothings wrong with JJ sniping, its only an "issue" now because we don't have ALL the mechs in the game. So the builds for mechs are very samll and condensed down to just a select few. The Orion will change things, the Victor will change things, and the 8 Clan mechs with launch will change the whole WORLD.

So stop thinking JJ sniping is something new, that it was the worst thing since the streak cat (also another CB thing that was laughed at) when its been a tried and true tactic since 1999 and with 3P in MW4.

Correction, JJs have been in use at least since the original MechWarrior (1989). Without all the crazy cockpit shake.

Quote

Medium mechs such as the Phoenix Hawk and Shadow Hawk had the ability to leap over terrain with jump jets and harass enemies from behind (the Jenner also has this property).

Edited by AntharPrime, 05 June 2013 - 01:05 PM.

[Petroshka]

It's not about realism or physics, it's about gameplay balance.

That being said.

Harrier = 6 Tons
Atlas = 100 Tons.

[Xmith]

MaddMaxx, on 05 June 2013 - 07:42 AM, said:

Poptarting is what Killed MW4. I was there. It sucked the very Life and Fun out of that game.

History was very near on the verge of repeating in MWO. Good save PGI, good save.

I disagree. It was NHUA servers that killed it. There actually were not that many snipers in the heat servers.

[Thuzel]

Kiiyor, on 04 June 2013 - 09:17 PM, said:

The average battlemech has the center of gravity and aerodynamic stability of a brick with farm implements taped to it. A particularly aerodynamically challenged brick. It would not be remotely stable in flight.

Which is all rendered moot by the fact that battletech physics are utterly incomparable to anything remotely rational. The bigger the gun, the less range it has. 100 Tonnes of mass compressed into about 4m² of footprint - yet no sinking at all.

Read a really interesting one about half a year ago where someone calculated armor thickness and the average density of an atlas and then went on to show that, given the displaced volume, an atlas would float. Reminded me of the concrete canoe contests so many engineering schools have.

Edited by Thuzel, 05 June 2013 - 01:22 PM.

[Zyllos]

Chou Senwan, on 04 June 2013 - 08:52 PM, said:

My proposal was to fix the pin-point damage issue, rather than the poptart issue. I mean, 6x PPC stalkers and AC/40 Jaegermechs are still on the battlefield.

I think someone sees whats the true problem with this game. Pin point weapon convergence.

Public enemy #1

[Shumabot]

Quote

Read a really interesting one about half a year ago where someone calculated armor thickness and the average density of an atlas and then went on to show that, given the displaced volume, an atlas would float. Reminded me of the concrete canoe contests so many engineering schools have.

Which conceptually makes for a pretty awful weapon of war, needlessly increasing your physical size and therefore visible profile while reducing the efficacy of armor by forcing it to be distributed more. This games scale and design logic is goofy.

[Tombstoner]

Steel Claws, on 04 June 2013 - 08:43 PM, said:

Sorry but this whole nerf was stupid. The people who complained were a minority but a vocal minority.

I would count myself among that minority and in my defense how many new players experienced pop tarting during that time and quit the game. how many of them bothered to post feed back on the forum.

Now that pop tarting requires more skill guess what its fallen out of favor. still doable just not as a long range alpha, alpha shutdown.... restart rinse repeat game play that takes full advantage of a missing part of the PRS.

ok as far as the applied physics wana be comment is concerned.... The harrier uses a fly by wire system without it it will wobble and crash. The same goes for the B-2.

Just like this early form of VTOL
if you want PGI can make a modual and call it fly by wire and you can have your perfect gyro stable pop tart.

Until then MW is based on BT TT and BT TT has gone through something called the succession wars... the old advanced industrial tech base is basically gone after hundreds of years of war or in such limited availability that only the best units have access to new parts. so yea... pin point alpha strikes to the CT from near max range have no place in MWO and PGI had the balls to fix it.

[Thuzel]

Shumabot, on 05 June 2013 - 01:37 PM, said:

Which conceptually makes for a pretty awful weapon of war, needlessly increasing your physical size and therefore visible profile while reducing the efficacy of armor by forcing it to be distributed more. This games scale and design logic is goofy.

Exactly. It's funny how defensive people get about their ideas and expectations with regards to "Battletech Reality".

It's just a game, and none of this would make even the slightest bit of sense on a real battlefield. Even if it were a thousand years in the future.

[IceSerpent]

Praetor Shepard, on 04 June 2013 - 08:57 PM, said:

Well, a Harrier is close to 14 tons and aerodynamic. Mechs are heavier and are not aerodynamic, so I don't think its a good comparison.

During VTOL Harrier is about as aerodynamic as an average red brick. Just saying...

Edit:

Quote

Until then MW is based on BT TT and BT TT has gone through something called the succession wars... the old advanced industrial tech base is basically gone after hundreds of years of war or in such limited availability that only the best units have access to new parts. so yea... pin point alpha strikes to the CT from near max range have no place in MWO and PGI had the balls to fix it.

You do realize that all mech controls in BT universe are by definition "drive by wire", right?

Edited by IceSerpent, 05 June 2013 - 01:57 PM.

[blinkin]

IceSerpent, on 05 June 2013 - 01:52 PM, said:

During VTOL Harrier is about as aerodynamic as an average red brick. Just saying...

but it is much more carefully balanced and possesses a far lower center of gravity than any mech.

[IceSerpent]

blinkin, on 05 June 2013 - 01:54 PM, said:

but it is much more carefully balanced and possesses a far lower center of gravity than any mech.

That's debatable - we have no slightest idea whether a given mech is balanced better or worse than a Harrier and center of gravity while mech is in the air depends on where exactly JJs are mounted.