76 replies to this topic

[Xie Belvoule]

Stoicblitzer, on 15 July 2013 - 02:07 PM, said:

can you still run assaults indefinitely and make a profit excluding premium?

Yes,I have close to 400 million C-Bills, even if I went negative 10,000 C-Bills every match I ran an Assault, it would take me over 25,000 matches to eat through my reserves. So yes I could run them essentially indefinitely.

[blinkin]

Xie Belvoule, on 15 July 2013 - 02:31 PM, said:

Yes,I have close to 400 million C-Bills, even if I went negative 10,000 C-Bills every match I ran an Assault, it would take me over 25,000 matches to eat through my reserves. So yes I could run them essentially indefinitely.

negative 10,000cbills? those are frigging cheap builds if that is all you have to worry about.

[Nebelfeuer]

Umm, guy you would not want matches that consist mostly of medium mechs all of the time. They are awesome once in a while but they generally involve much les tactical play and a lot of fast and uncontrolable movement and clusterfuckengagements. Half of the weapons would loose much of their worth(especially SRM and LRM) with this weightchange(and no ppc would be one of the better choices still).

Beside Mediums are quite competative. I never felt underpowered regardless against which weightclass piloting one. The results of the tornaments also indicate that mediums are not inferior to othher weighclasses.

[TehSBGX]

Nebel, Mediums are supposed to cause confusion against the enemy team. They're meant to bounce around where needed or rip enemies apart in speedy wolf packs. Thing is most of them are the size of heavies and aren't fast of enough to do their job properly. I run a Centurion all the time, and 98 kph sounds fast in theory but it's not enough especially when you're too big.

[Kilrein]

One Medic Army, on 15 July 2013 - 02:03 PM, said:

The basic fact is that a Cent with a 200engine, or a 250 engine, or even a 275 engine, gets fewer guns than a heavier mech going at the same speed.
Cents only get more guns at a given speed than other tonnages of mech starting at 280std.

Yes, a 280std Cent gets fewer guns than a 250std Cent, but the 250 Cent gets less guns than other mechs going at the same speed, at least the 280std Cent would get more guns than a heavier mech going the same speed.

Speed is a tradeoff, you want to find the right spot on that tradeoff curve.

A cent with a 275 goes 89.1, to go the same speed these heavies would have to have

Dragon/quickdraw, 330 std, +10 tons over the Cents engine, there goes that weight advantage to get the same speed
Catapult, can't do it, limited to a 315 and a max speed of 78.5
Jägermech, can't do it, limited to a 315 and a top speed of 78.5
Firebrand, can't do it, max 340 and a top speed of 84.7
Cataphract, can't do it, limited to a 340 and a top speed of 78.7

So how can a heavy go the same speed as a centurion with a 275 STD?

[One Medic Army]

Kilrein, on 15 July 2013 - 03:11 PM, said:

A cent with a 275 goes 89.1, to go the same speed these heavies would have to have

Dragon/quickdraw, 330 std, +10 tons over the Cents engine, there goes that weight advantage to get the same speed
Catapult, can't do it, limited to a 315 and a max speed of 78.5
Jägermech, can't do it, limited to a 315 and a top speed of 78.5
Firebrand, can't do it, max 340 and a top speed of 84.7
Cataphract, can't do it, limited to a 340 and a top speed of 78.7

So how can a heavy go the same speed as a centurion with a 275 STD?

Since the efficient point for 50tons starts at 280 (with endo) the efficient point for 89.1 (50t@275std) is around 55tons.
Yeah, it's not a big deal, because you're only off by 5.

([edit] A 55tonner with a 300std goes 88.4 and gets an extra 1.25tons, plus an extra space for a heatsink)

If you start talking about the 260 on a hunch it gets more important, at the speeds a hunch gets with a 260 you're better off in a Dragon pretty much all the time, except that the Dragon has a giant CT and tiny sides so you may as well get an XL and outspeed the hunch even more.

We're going to get a 55ton mech with a base 5/8 speed, it'll be able to go the same speed as a 275std Centurion with a slight edge in both maximum armor and payload, plus having jumpjets.
In the future we may get fast 60 or 65 or 70tonners which will further obsolete the slow hunchback.

It's not just about the mechs we have right now, it's about how possible future chassis (not equipment) will make what we have irrelevant.

Edited by One Medic Army, 15 July 2013 - 03:25 PM.

[AntiCitizenJuan]

Kilrein, on 15 July 2013 - 03:11 PM, said:

A cent with a 275 goes 89.1, to go the same speed these heavies would have to have

Dragon/quickdraw, 330 std, +10 tons over the Cents engine, there goes that weight advantage to get the same speed
Catapult, can't do it, limited to a 315 and a max speed of 78.5
Jägermech, can't do it, limited to a 315 and a top speed of 78.5
Firebrand, can't do it, max 340 and a top speed of 84.7
Cataphract, can't do it, limited to a 340 and a top speed of 78.7

So how can a heavy go the same speed as a centurion with a 275 STD?

The Cent sacrifices a lot of firepower to go that fast.
Where as the Heavy can go in the 70's and still have killer firepower.

With the 250 it goes 89.1 post speed tweak.
Meanwhile a Heavy going just 15kph slower has insanely more firepower for not that much less speed.

[Kanatta Jing]

This is what the Average weight distribution of the Inner Sphere houses looks like arround the 4th Succession War when pressed into the 12 man grouping. 3 out of 5 house armies gets a straight medium Lance in the middle.

The game doesn't have to look like this, but I think it would be a lot more fun if looked a lot more like this.

[Nebelfeuer]

TehSBGX, on 15 July 2013 - 02:51 PM, said:

Nebel, Mediums are supposed to cause confusion against the enemy team. They're meant to bounce around where needed or rip enemies apart in speedy wolf packs. Thing is most of them are the size of heavies and aren't fast of enough to do their job properly. I run a Centurion all the time, and 98 kph sounds fast in theory but it's not enough especially when you're too big.

My favourite is a range support Treb at 92 KpH closely followed by an all range Hunchy 85kph recently followed by a Cent at 107 kph and regardless of size I found them absolutely able to do the job you described. Hight of a mech is not as relevant for evading enemy fire at long range as is width - If the Treb was smaller it would loose much of its long range capability for example because he would loose its great overveiw. Hunchies are better brawlers than range fighter due to their low profile and cents are somewhere in the middle with great shilding arms and unhitable CTs. I would not like to see them made the same in size - they would loose much of their uniqueness.

Overall the key is indeed to find the right speed for a medium mech to make it feel right - weaponloadout is secondary to that.

Oh forgot to mention that this iis concerning MWO - in TT your jobdescribtion would be more that of lights(still true in MWO) because normally mediums do not move much faster than heavies or assaults locking at the stockdesigns we currently have in game.

Edited by Nebelfeuer, 15 July 2013 - 03:49 PM.

[Deathlike]

Kilrein, on 15 July 2013 - 03:11 PM, said:

A cent with a 275 goes 89.1, to go the same speed these heavies would have to have

Dragon/quickdraw, 330 std, +10 tons over the Cents engine, there goes that weight advantage to get the same speed
Catapult, can't do it, limited to a 315 and a max speed of 78.5
Jägermech, can't do it, limited to a 315 and a top speed of 78.5
Firebrand, can't do it, max 340 and a top speed of 84.7
Cataphract, can't do it, limited to a 340 and a top speed of 78.7

So how can a heavy go the same speed as a centurion with a 275 STD?

The chassis in bold tend to use XL, which effectively negates most of that tonnage loss. In fact, some would argue that they do a better job than most mediums do, while still being in the heavy class (although, the poor Cicada isn't even in the same convo when compared to other lights).

Edited by Deathlike, 15 July 2013 - 04:10 PM.

[Kilrein]

AntiCitizenJuan, on 15 July 2013 - 03:16 PM, said:

The Cent sacrifices a lot of firepower to go that fast.
Where as the Heavy can go in the 70's and still have killer firepower.

With the 250 it goes 89.1 post speed tweak.
Meanwhile a Heavy going just 15kph slower has insanely more firepower for not that much less speed.

15 kph is quite a difference. If a medium is going 90 and the heavy 75, that's significant. The medium can turn faster, accelerate faster and extend the range. Sadly on most maps that isn't going to help much as contact ranges are so short and weapon cycle times so fast. A 15 kph difference means 4.2 meters per second distance between the two units assuming both traveling in a straight path in the same direction. Sadly, that just adds 16.8 meters distance per PPC cycle. And from a contact distance of 90 meters,it will take the faster mech 107 seconds to open the range to 540 meters. That's 26.75 PPC cycles. Ugh.

And THAT'S the issue with the game currently, weapon speeds are much faster then unit speeds in both RoF and travel speed.

[Xie Belvoule]

blinkin, on 15 July 2013 - 02:32 PM, said:

negative 10,000cbills? those are frigging cheap builds if that is all you have to worry about.

I could lose 20,000 or 30,000 C-Bills every match and still play over 20,000 matches before the impact would start to be felt.

[blinkin]

Xie Belvoule, on 15 July 2013 - 07:36 PM, said:

I could lose 20,000 or 30,000 C-Bills every match and still play over 20,000 matches before the impact would start to be felt.

in the old days my catapult would likely cost me 75,000cbills if i played poorly, AFTER the match win/loss rewards. the average repair cost was somewhere between 75,000 and 150,000cbills any time i took internal hits to any of my torsos.

i suspect you built that stockpile from playing quite a bit. if you continue playing at that pace, you could easily burn through that whole stockpile just as quickly as you built it with a proper RR system. 5 months.


there are plenty of other players that this would begin balancing immediately. currently my cbill balance is less than a million because i have been buying and selling several mechs lately to grind up xp and complete pilot trees.

Edited by blinkin, 15 July 2013 - 08:02 PM.

[Zerberoff]

Dunno if anyone has mention this already, but i´d say give out heat penalties for Heavy and Assault Mechs cause of there thick Armor.

[MeiSooHaityu]

Zerberoff, on 16 July 2013 - 04:27 AM, said:

Dunno if anyone has mention this already, but i´d say give out heat penalties for Heavy and Assault Mechs cause of there thick Armor.

Sorry, but no.

[Steven Dixon]

I think that several small things should be introduced over time and I agree with many of the suggestions made. I play all mechs, but I generally only play my mediums when I want a challenge or simply a novelty. These are in order of what I personally think is most important.

1. Reduce hit boxes/model size: I appreciate that this is actually a lot of work, but I also think that its crucial. Some mediums should just be made smaller and some heavies larger.

2. Make mediums more agile: give them a boost to turning and acceleration/deceleration, perhaps a small movement boost. As far as slopes go, they should be almost as agile as the lights.

3. Give them a higher engine cap: personally I only think that it should be a small increase, the point isn't to make mediums into more powerful lights after all, but I can still see how a boost can be worthwhile.

4. Weight matching: I think that this will come in time. Of course this will probably simply mean that we will see many more cicadas with a few more cents and hunches.

4. Give them a C-Bill boost: I think this is important. Even ignoring lore reasons, its generally harder to play mediums than other mechs so players should be rewarded for doing well. I think Stoicblitzers suggestion would be fine, or perhaps just a flat 10% c-bill boost. Their are definite pitfalls of course to this system and problems which might negate the benefits. For example, why wouldn't people just play the cicada instead of the blackjack? Ideally this would make mediums a good mech for beginners who are trying to learn the game. If people have billions of c-bills they can keep playing assaults, that's fine, but mediums actually make a decent beginners mech. They have some mobility, they can do some brawling, and if you die you aren't as much of a burden to your team as if you were in an assault, ect. However they shouldn't reintroduce RnR. I personally miss it, but it was removed because it penalized inexperienced players, this hasn't changed.

[Dadrick]

I think the biggest change PGI could make that would bring mediums back, and help curb ppc boating, is weight balancing.