70 replies to this topic

[Gaan Cathal]

Viktor Drake, on 18 June 2013 - 05:53 PM, said:

The reason games are going to the F2P model is because the F2P model is actually more profitable for game developers than the subscription model. Therefore we honestly should be expecting more, not less.

Also when you consider that unlike a subscription model, a F2P model lives or dies by it ability to convince its players to spend even more money than they would on a subscription, it is equally obvious that a F2P game should offer even more AAA content.

F2P =/= AAA

F2P can be AA, with a AA budget. Planetside 2 (buggy, hellish mess though it can be) is a AAA F2P.

Battlestar Galactica Online is also an F2P. It's also a browser game. More or less a twitch-control Farmville in terms of development resources.

MW:O is not, by a long shot, a BSG:O. It is also, however, not a Planetside 2. It doesn't have a AAA budget, development team, publisher or potential market. Ergo it is not a AAA title.

[Terror Teddy]

You know...that might work - but lets try tweaking it.

Give all weapons a "small" area effect depending on size so the ac 20 might hit a hex but also hit the ones around AND the third layer as well.

The damage of the weapon would spread out ovr several hexes doing 50% to main hit hex and 25% to the two outer ones.

No more extreme pinpoint damage to any weapon.

Perhaps give ballistics a 1+1 hex area
Energy weapons get 1+1+1
SRM get 1+1
LRM get 1+1+1
SARM get 1+1+1 (since they hit so easily)

After all, armour get distorted around the main hit location.

Question is programming time and complexity.

Edited by Terror Teddy, 18 June 2013 - 10:26 PM.

[SpiralRazor]

Kraven Kor, on 18 June 2013 - 10:30 AM, said:

I think this would be a neat idea.

Armor (in the real world...) is, generally speaking, kind of "all or nothing." Either it deflects the incoming attack entirely, or the incoming attack breeches the armor and musses things all up.

Repetitive hits to the same spot mean nothing, until the armor is actually damaged or weakened or breached in that spot.

With this, light mechs could have say "15 points per hex" and fewer overall hexes (an AC/20 will breach one hex, period.) Heavier mechs have more per hex; so assaults might have 30 per hex, mediums 20, heavies 25, or whatever, right? And also more hexes overall.

A truly good shot could land all his ordinance on a single hex and be nearly guaranteed a chance at internal damage and criticals; those that spray and pray wouldn't see all that much difference to their performance.

Any shot that hits a spot with a breach, or breaches a hex of armor, deals damage to the internal structure as normal, and gets a chance at a crit.

Now, I don't see this happening here and would not recommend it, but it is an interesting idea.

We do know, though, that more hitboxes = more problems, generally speaking.

Kind of......even the best military plating can be pierced nowadays...thats why the new Abrams use a combination of ablative and reactive armor.

Edited by SpiralRazor, 18 June 2013 - 10:39 PM.

[Gaan Cathal]

Terror Teddy, on 18 June 2013 - 10:25 PM, said:

You know...that might work - but lets try tweaking it.

Give all weapons a "small" area effect depending on size so the ac 20 might hit a hex but also hit the ones around AND the third layer as well.

The damage of the weapon would spread out ovr several hexes doing 50% to main hit hex and 25% to the two outer ones.

No more extreme pinpoint damage to any weapon.

Perhaps give ballistics a 1+1 hex area
Energy weapons get 1+1+1
SRM get 1+1
LRM get 1+1+1
SARM get 1+1+1 (since they hit so easily)

After all, armour get distorted around the main hit location.

Question is programming time and complexity.

Why the nerf to lasers? They already spread their damage over a number of tics, why make those ticks spread damage as well? If anything a laser tick should be 1 hex since it's only a fraction of the listed damage.

That said, I think that would actually work if the damage of the weapon was divided (unevenly, biased to centre) between all hit hexes. Doing 50% to hit loc and 25% elsewhere suddenly means that the wider your splash the more damage you do. Ballistics will suddenly go down the pan when missiles do potentially multiple times more damage relative to list number.

[Karl Streiger]

Kitane, on 18 June 2013 - 10:32 AM, said:

I had a similar idea a while ago. I can't imagine any serious attempt to bring a believable BT mech combat to a PC game without droping the whole old TT armor system and replacing it with a new armor system with a proper damage model.

The game will never be balanced with a component armor system.

Exactly

Petroshka, on 18 June 2013 - 10:47 AM, said:

r just make more mech body parts

- Head
- Upper arm
- Lower Arm
- Upper leg
- Lower Leg
- Chest
- Upper back
- Abdomen
- Lower back
- L. Shoulder
- L. Rear Shoulder
- R. Shoulder.
- R. Rear Shoulder.

This is another option - but maybe each armor part should have another treshhold - aiming for weakspots will become important (hip or knee (from side)- instead of lower leg

Terror Teddy, on 18 June 2013 - 10:25 PM, said:

You know...that might work - but lets try tweaking it.

Give all weapons a "small" area effect depending on size so the ac 20 might hit a hex but also hit the ones around AND the third layer as well.

The damage of the weapon would spread out ovr several hexes doing 50% to main hit hex and 25% to the two outer ones.

No more extreme pinpoint damage to any weapon.

Perhaps give ballistics a 1+1 hex area
Energy weapons get 1+1+1
SRM get 1+1
LRM get 1+1+1
SARM get 1+1+1 (since they hit so easily)

After all, armour get distorted around the main hit location.

Question is programming time and complexity.

Hm - maybe ... but laser should never spread damage - they deal damage only on point - good to punctuate armor.
Ballistic on the other hand should be great for removing big chuncs of armor w
while missiles do kind of both.

[MustrumRidcully]

Roughneck45, on 18 June 2013 - 10:24 AM, said:

No, that looks awful.

Im sure it would be a nightmare to code as well.

Damage does not need to be spread for you, you need to learn to torso twist. The fact that you can actually target 11 different parts of the mech is one of the most enjoyable aspects of the game.

No, t he most enjoyable thing is getting a 40 point damage strike into the CT every time with a single press of the button, every 4 seconds, and then torso twisting between shots and seeing the enemy spreading all his damage ineffectual over my hit locations.

[Gaan Cathal]

MustrumRidcully, on 19 June 2013 - 12:55 AM, said:

No, t he most enjoyable thing is getting a 40 point damage strike into the CT every time with a single press of the button, every 4 seconds, and then torso twisting between shots and seeing the enemy spreading all his damage ineffectual over my hit locations.

But the Jaeger has a massive crotch....

[MustrumRidcully]

Gaan Cathal, on 19 June 2013 - 12:56 AM, said:

But the Jaeger has a massive crotch....

Shooting there is poor sportsmanship.

Admittedly, I would be using a Jagermech for getting this experience, not a Quad PPC Stalker.

[Gaan Cathal]

MustrumRidcully, on 19 June 2013 - 12:58 AM, said:

Shooting there is poor sportsmanship.

Admittedly, I would be using a Jagermech for getting this experience, not a Quad PPC Stalker.

I actually find keeping face-on at range in a Stalker works fine, damage tends to split evenly over my side torsos that way, with a little clipping into CT. Better than taking it all on one side torso and loosing a wing full of boom.

Edit: That said, it's been a while since I piloted one. Might've been pre-Elo.

Edited by Gaan Cathal, 19 June 2013 - 01:03 AM.

[Syllogy]

Not to mention that this creates substantially MORE hitboxes than there already are. No.

[Karl Streiger]

Syllogy, on 19 June 2013 - 03:47 AM, said:

Not to mention that this creates substantially MORE hitboxes than there already are. No.

Hm...there are obviously only three directions:

• more hitboxes
  
• fewer hitboxes (one for the torso - will increase surviabilty for all mechs)
  
• make something complete different

So you are in for?

Or do you think actual hitboxes are fine - because broken math and broken basics are a good base for a long and enjoyable gaming experience?

Edited by Karl Streiger, 19 June 2013 - 04:40 AM.

[MaddMaxx]

Picture date Dec. 2, 2011. Didn't fly then either. Sorry OP

[MaddMaxx]

Unbound Inferno, on 18 June 2013 - 01:57 PM, said:

Fascinating idea, but its quite contrary to the basic battletech lore that mwchwarrior is supposedly based off of.

It would be a suitable option within another game, but not here.

snip

Not true in fact. BattleTech has more than 1 armor type. We have ablative online, what about Reflective (more effective against Energy) and Reactive Armor (more effective against Ballistics).

These are Canon and could be used in a manner so as to compliment the OP's idea.

The issue that arises is when these were intro'd. 3058 for Reflective (experimental) so bummer.

[Bishop Steiner]

dario03, on 18 June 2013 - 10:22 AM, said:

Wouldn't that buff bigger mechs more than lighter mechs? Aren't the bigger mechs already the best and most used mechs? Why do they need a buff?

have you played recently? Lights are dang near invulnerable again, anyhow!

[Syllogy]

Karl Streiger, on 19 June 2013 - 04:38 AM, said:

Hm...there are obviously only three directions:

• more hitboxes
  
• fewer hitboxes (one for the torso - will increase surviabilty for all mechs)
  
• make something complete different

So you are in for?


Or do you think actual hitboxes are fine - because broken math and broken basics are a good base for a long and enjoyable gaming experience?

Why do you think that those are the only obvious answers?

In essence, this is an attempt to make bigger mechs more survivable.

Another (and much easier) solution would be to increase armor on some of these mechs instead of re-writing thousands of lines of code to implement something like this.

And yet another (and almost as easy) solution would be to decrease the amount of pinpoint damage while increasing (or granting) splash damage to some of the weapons in question. They will still hit hard, but they won't be doing all of that damage in a single spot.

AND ANOTHER solution to the problem would be to change autocannons and PPCs to be short-duration-based weapons instead of instant-damage they are now. Imagine crossing the duration-beam of a Laser and the ballistic trajectory of a Machine gun being fired over the course of time. This would also cause damage to be more spread out.

Edited by Syllogy, 19 June 2013 - 05:29 AM.

[Karl Streiger]

Syllogy, on 19 June 2013 - 05:22 AM, said:

Why do you think that those are the only obvious answers?

In essence, this is an attempt to make bigger mechs more survivable.

Erm... darn you are right. They look like the obvious answers to chance something - only when taken armor in account.

Your take another approach that might be more simple to realize.

But shouldn't the armor at each zone should have a modificator based on its size?
It doesn't seems to be logical that you have the same armor at the side of a Catapult as on a JaegerMech.

[Kaspirikay]

OP, I like your idea.

[Syllogy]

Karl Streiger, on 19 June 2013 - 05:44 AM, said:

But shouldn't the armor at each zone should have a modificator based on its size?
It doesn't seems to be logical that you have the same armor at the side of a Catapult as on a JaegerMech.

I'd be a fan of doubling the armor limits (not stock armor values) of mechs.

To me, it would allow players to face the intimidating tradeoff between firepower and survivability.

Edited by Syllogy, 19 June 2013 - 07:17 AM.

[Terror Teddy]

Gaan Cathal, on 18 June 2013 - 10:41 PM, said:

Why the nerf to lasers? They already spread their damage over a number of tics, why make those ticks spread damage as well? If anything a laser tick should be 1 hex since it's only a fraction of the listed damage.

Whoops, perhaps i should have been clearer.

Standard lasers should have 1 but PPC's should have 1+1.

I also think that armour values would have to be lowered so that heavier weapons keep a noticeable impact. Instead of doubled perhaps 1.5.

[ExtremeA79]

This would be a nightmare to code. This will never happen.