17 replies to this topic

[Zyllos]

There is a nice large discrepancy between engine rating and torso twist/arm speeds:

Torso Twisting/Arm Speed is effected by engine rating.

The problem with this is that torso twisting/arm speed determines your overall tracking and accuracy against a target. This is why it's always beneficial to have larger engines in every mech than smaller ones.

So why should engine rating have an effect on accuracy?

Engine rating should only have a determinate factor of acceleration and maximum speed. Effecting torso twisting and arm speeds should be dependent on the chassis.

Thus, the Atlas will always torso twist slow, no matter the engine size. While the Commando will always torso twist fast, no matter the engine size.

I suggest decoupling the torso twist/arm speeds from engine ratings and tie them to the chassis. This will also allow different variants to have faster/slower twists, independent of how they are equipped. This will also give reasons for equipping smaller engines, to save tonnage for sacrificing speed and acceleration and not being a double whammy of also losing accuracy due to lower torso twist/arm speeds.

As always, I abstain from my own polls.

Edited by Zyllos, 05 April 2013 - 10:03 AM.

[canned wolf]

If there's more power available to twist the chasis, then it will twist faster. You could make the twist gain non linear to make some of the more obscure engine sizes more attractive.

[Deathlike]

The only reason I think this is done is so that faster mechs would be "more responsive" at higher speeds. It would be somewhat difficult to "hit and run" as a light mech w/o being able to stop on a dime to turn and then shoot.

In order to "correct" this, the behavior would allow for faster mechs to essentially be "equally effective" at higher speeds.

However, there's so many things wrong about that with respect to bigger mechs, primarily assaults. Then again, it does kinda make you have to use bigger engines to "make up" for such a deficiency.

Edited by Deathlike, 05 April 2013 - 02:34 PM.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

Each chassis should be modified to improve responsiveness, without needing a larger engine to do it.

Tweaking the Pilot tree if necessary, is another way to take away the reliance on needing a higher engine rating for a better response from our mechs.


Sharing a link to an interesting essay from Sarna that provides some neat details about how mechs work. Highlighting the last section, but the whole essay seems to be a fine read.
http://www.sarna.net...h_functionality

[Deathlike]

To some degree, the devs got this wrong in a sense. For making the engine changes torso twist and arms and turning... you wonder if they are treating the mech as if it were a FPS... where a "faster player" should be able to react quickly despite having weaker weapons (like a pistol)... and a "slower player" should be able to react slower when having stronger weapons (like a bazooka).

Mechs should be more like cars (vehicles) where increasing your top speed doesn't mean you automatically increase your control and handle. I'm not great at the car analogy, but that's kinda the way the devs seem to have programmed the game to behave this way.

[blinkin]

Deathlike, on 05 April 2013 - 04:28 PM, said:

To some degree, the devs got this wrong in a sense. For making the engine changes torso twist and arms and turning... you wonder if they are treating the mech as if it were a FPS... where a "faster player" should be able to react quickly despite having weaker weapons (like a pistol)... and a "slower player" should be able to react slower when having stronger weapons (like a bazooka).

Mechs should be more like cars (vehicles) where increasing your top speed doesn't mean you automatically increase your control and handle. I'm not great at the car analogy, but that's kinda the way the devs seem to have programmed the game to behave this way.

i understand your point, but they have not made any effort to include any mechanics that would work in the way you describe. in the past i even made a post about different joint components and gyros that would change the performance of the mechs. unfortunately the developers seem to be pushing this game more towards a simpler gameplay and away from the simulator style that i would prefer. (i would link that thread but i think it was lost when the "beta feedback" forum was removed.)

what is listed in the OP is the next best thing in my opinion. not exactly what i would like, but an acceptable system that the developers just might accept.

Edited by blinkin, 05 April 2013 - 04:58 PM.

[Deathlike]

blinkin, on 05 April 2013 - 04:56 PM, said:

i understand your point, but they have not made any effort to include any mechanics that would work in the way you describe. in the past i even made a post about different joint components and gyros that would change the performance of the mechs. unfortunately the developers seem to be pushing this game more towards a simpler gameplay and away from the simulator style that i would prefer. (i would link that thread but i think it was lost when the "beta feedback" forum was removed.)

It's called an FPS. The new controls that were added... exactly for that very purpose, which TBH is not entirely beneficial for the game.. just "better FPS controls".

[Renthrak]

Zyllos, on 05 April 2013 - 10:02 AM, said:

Thus, the Atlas will always torso twist slow, no matter the engine size. While the Commando will always torso twist fast, no matter the engine size.

This.

[Keifomofutu]

Definitely agreed. It's one thing for a 70 ton mech to go nearly the same speed as a full speed hunchback 92 vs 86, but its hugely imbalancing to medium mechs that the heavy mech also handles like a medium at that speed.

[Ningyo]

I am of two minds on this, first I do not like the torso turn speeds being linked to engine rating I agree with you there.

However I have to wonder if decoupling the two would cause an unintended consequence. I have piloted some mechs where if you run at full tilt in circles (mostly a light mech thing) around another mech, you can maintain a close to even target on the mech. If the engine speed were no longer linked to manuevering speeds, then this likely would not be the case.

Now I am not certain if that would actually occur, I just see potential, and if it did occur it might add a bit more skill to light mech strafing which could be good. Or might just make them really really newbie unfriendly. Just some things to think about.

[Kaio-Kerensky x10]

Keifomofutu, on 10 May 2013 - 09:23 PM, said:

Definitely agreed. It's one thing for a 70 ton mech to go nearly the same speed as a full speed hunchback 92 vs 86, but its hugely imbalancing to medium mechs that the heavy mech also handles like a medium at that speed.

Have you considered not using the slowest, most sluggish medium mech then?

[Keifomofutu]

Zharot, on 12 May 2013 - 03:46 PM, said:

Have you considered not using the slowest, most sluggish medium mech then?

I have but then I realized how big they were...

[aniviron]

There was a dev comment (atd? inverview? can't remember) about this some time ago. What was said at the time was that the thing that is supposed to affect torso twist speed is the gyro, and right now we can't modify the gyro independently of the engine. At some point they want to decouple engine speed and link it to the gyro instead.

I do think that's going to be a disaster, though. Imagine every atlas running a 200std with the largest possible gyro.

[Asmudius Heng]

I agree that engine size should no affect the torso twist etc - the overall benefits of upping your engine are so much more than the tonage saving of going smaller. Its rediculous quite frankly and needs to be changed.

If they can decouple the gyro and you can adjust that I would certain prefer that so you have speed and agaility as two seperate measurements. As long as they gyro doesnt change it THAT much so your base level of agility of the torso and arms does not change massivly allowing each chassis to have a difference in thier base torso agility.

[Miken]

I think difference in torso's/arm's moving speed between slowest and fastest engines must be approximately 10-15%, and Heavy and assault mechs should not be in time for spin at light and medium mechs

[Captain Katawa]

Engine mass includes myomers.
The larger your myomers are (mech muscules) the stronger it is so it will move both it's arms and it's legs faster.

And yes.
Any changes to it will completely kill everything that is fun like AWS-9M.

Maybe they should increase mobility buff from engine or leave it as it is.

aniviron, on 19 June 2013 - 10:07 PM, said:

I do think that's going to be a disaster, though. Imagine every atlas running a 200std with the largest possible gyro.

I hope they will change their minds.

Miken, on 19 June 2013 - 10:58 PM, said:

I think difference in torso's/arm's moving speed between slowest and fastest engines must be approximately 10-15%, and Heavy and assault mechs should not be in time for spin at light and medium mechs

I think it must be same as speed difference.

Edited by Captain Katawa, 20 June 2013 - 12:40 PM.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

Captain Katawa, on 20 June 2013 - 12:41 PM, said:

Engine mass includes myomers.
The larger your myomers are (mech muscules) the stronger it is so it will move both it's arms and it's legs faster.

And yes.
Any changes to it will completely kill everything that is fun like AWS-9M.

Maybe they should increase mobility buff from engine or leave it as it is.

I disagree, some what. It's true that the larger the Engine, the higher the amount of electrical power can be provided. But more raw power should not make actuators or myomers go beyond what they are capable of alone, and extra unecessary power should be a factor maybe even able to cause damage from the engine overheating with few places to send the excess power.

• Check out this except from here: "Myomers are not merely 'Mech scale plastic muscles. Rather, they are very powerful electrical motors. For reference, the myomer bundles in a 'Mechs fingers are multi-kilowatt motors. The leg myomers are far more powerful. The downside of myomers is that they aren't efficient electrical motors due to high internal electrical resistance. Myomers are roughly as wasteful of energy as natural muscle or internal combustion engines... much of the energy required to activate them is simply wasted into heat. Myomers can actually generate enough waste heat to cook themselves, and so the Myomer bundles are laced with a network of flexible tubing which carries coolant fluids to and from the BattleMech's Heat Sink system to handle this waste heat."

• And also this part from the same article: "In the early days some BattleMech designers experimented with using fusion engines that produced more power than a particular chassis needed. The idea was that the extra power produced would provide some nebulous benefits in combat. However, this turned out to not only be false, but the oversized engines actually would generate too much heat and would either cook off explosive ammo stored in the BattleMech; or the engine safeties would cut in and automatically shut down the engine. A BattleMech can only use so much power... trying to force it to use more simply does not work."

So, in my opinion, there are not enough proper trade-offs when we trade-up engines and go faster as it is, which is something that should be a consideration in building a mech, since we already have so many Heavies outperforming Mediums, and Assaults also being able to out perform Heavies.


The other is that mechs should have a walking speed and a running speed, but in MWO we are all basically running around at max running speed (partly out of necessity from other flaws in the game), but running is not taxing our mechs as much as it probably should in real-time compared to TT.

And there is MASC (and maybe a few other mech design quirks from TT) that can boost speeds above normal for bursts, but MASC use degrades the mech when used excessively and has other trade offs for that kind of performance, so that system has a built-in trade-offs compared to how MWO currently works with mech speeds.




So, if mech agility is programmed instead by each mech (+variants) independent of engine, then mechs can have varying degrees of agility so that any Awesome or Victor remains far more agile than any Stalker, Highlander or Atlas, regardless of engine used for higher speed. There are already too many benefits gained from mounting larger engines, where most mechs already can go faster, so I feel that there should be no need to attain better agility if that is preset to the mech.



And also the weight of an empty Awesome is 8 tons, compared to the 10 tons of an Atlas (and the 2.5 tons of a Commando), which is the weight of both the skeleton and myomers AFAIK, engine weight is simply the weight of the engine, cooling system and protective systems for the engine.

So, the extra weight carried by a fully loaded Atlas should slow it down more than an Awesome fully loaded, since there is a 20 ton difference between them with an Awesome's 8 tons managing 72 tons of Armor, Weapons and other gear and the Atlas has 10 tons to manage 90 tons of gear.

So for better game balance, we should at least separate a mech's agility from engine rating, IMHO.

Edit: spelling

Edited by Praetor Shepard, 25 July 2013 - 02:43 PM.

[Wolf Ender]

as far as i know MWO is the first iteration of Mechwarrior to link engine size to torso twist speed, i think it's one of the coolest features of the game and it's a great incentive to put bigger engines into your mechs

there still ought to be mechs with inherently better torso twist rates (catapult that can pretty much almost shoot behind itself) and ratios and some mechs that torso twist slower on base level (like stalker having such a narrow field) but we should be allowed to try to improve that deficiency by adding bigger engines.