48 replies to this topic

[Tragos]

Actually ERPPC + Gauss works pretty well vs spiders...

[Modo44]

You have to be a good shot, though, which is where half the whining comes from. Lasers and missiles make it easier to hit lights reliably.

[Tesunie]

Jabilo, on 23 July 2013 - 09:48 AM, said:

The spider should not be balanced by being bugged and having clear direct hits not registering.

If something is broken then it should be fixed.

If the spider then becomes pointless and needs further balancing then so be it; but it should be balanced by clear intended design decisions not by just letting it stay broken - which is most certainly is.

Some of those clear hits are actually not hitting as you think. Some, if not most, of those hits are when your targeting is still behind the Spider, so the beams, bullets or missiles skim by the sides of the spider. Really, only one or two weapons you are firing are actually hitting a Spider in most cases. It's a weapon convergence issue, more than a spider issue, as weapons shouldn't converge as well as they do anyway.

If anything, hold your reticule over a Spider for a short while before you shoot. This will help your weapons converge on their target. However, with how fast a spider's moves, it will be very hard to get your weapons to converge on them. Some people have used the ground at the spiders feet to align their weapons convergence, and then quickly bring them up and shoot where the spider is.

Lugh, on 23 July 2013 - 10:05 AM, said:

1) ERPPCs don't have a min range
2) Gauss Rifles don't have min range
3) SRMs don't have a min range.
4) Med Lasers don't have a min range.

so 15damage, 10 damage, 10 damage and 24 damage, That's 59points to the face. and NOTHING.

Most of the weapons you stated don't have minimum range but do have delays and deal burst damage. Your weapon's convergence are not moving to where the spider is, but instead to some distant point behind the spider. Honestly, you probably were only causing damage with a couple of SRMs and some splash with the lasers.


As a newish (Picked them up when they where new, dropped them fore a bit, rebought them) spider pilot myself, I've been slowly picked apart piece by piece from accurate fire. I've also survived a really long time against burst damage weapons (such as PPC and Gauss) because they couldn't hit me, or only one weapon out of the group hit me. Then again, I've had a match where I ran around the foe, shooting my lasers, and ended up after 3 or 4 minutes of this dance doing only 30ish damage. I kept splashing targets with laser fire instead of being able to concentrate my fire on one area for the whole duration. If I have a PPC on a spider, my shots tend to still be focused on a point behind the target and my shots still normally go wide from my speed and not giving enough time for my targeting systems to converge my weapons onto my target.

[ohtochooseaname]

The fact is that the spider has an extremely small profile as well as jump jets, allowing them to generally face side-on when not firing. Since, in order to hit with any projectile weapon, you have to lead the target, your convergence will be off, and you are faced with a very small profile. This means most of your shots will necessarily miss unless they artificially smear the profile out laterally even more to allow for people to hit better. Also, the fact that they can jump jet further complicates the problem, as even vertical convergence can be off.

[Deathlike]

Spiders are not even close to the "3L menace" that people used to cry about.

They benefit from poor HSR, but they are still readily easy to core. It's not easy, so please use SKILL, despite the poor hitreg so that you may core the new "menace" that is primarily harmful if you're vulnerable.

[Lugh]

Kyocera, on 23 July 2013 - 10:05 AM, said:

I die enough times in my spider to know it isn't that OP at all. There are a handful of really pro spider pilots who you'll have trouble with, just the same as you find some very skilled assault pilots.

You just have to bide your time until they're moving in a straight line away from you, land after jump jetting or come to a stop. I don't normally have too much trouble taking out not so pro spider pilots with a bit of patience, be it with ballistics or lasers.

And when you DO that and your 59points of damage FLASH the doll CT and nothing happens...that's how you KNOW that the hit boxes are FUBAR.

[Peregrine Plover]

MrTonic, on 23 July 2013 - 08:30 AM, said:

I smell someone who's using lots of heavy lasers, or maybe LRMs. If you hit spiders they die, the're meant to be hard to hit. Bear in mind that a beam needs to connect for the full duration for the marked damage, sweeping over them will light the paperdoll up, but not do a great deal.

This.

[Peregrine Plover]

Kyocera, on 23 July 2013 - 10:05 AM, said:

I die enough times in my spider to know it isn't that OP at all. There are a handful of really pro spider pilots who you'll have trouble with, just the same as you find some very skilled assault pilots.

You just have to bide your time until they're moving in a straight line away from you, land after jump jetting or come to a stop. I don't normally have too much trouble taking out not so pro spider pilots with a bit of patience, be it with ballistics or lasers.

I don't know what to make of anecdotes about motionless Spiders registering little damage from point blank attacks. That does not correspond with my experience, either as a pilot, or as someone who has destroyed many Spiders. I have gotten killed many, many times in my Spider from walking into foolish situations. I have even been one-shotted on several occasions I can recall. Once, I ran from spawn point to hilltop on Frozen City and immediately died from one sniper round. I had been playing for less than 30 seconds.

Usually, survival for Spiders requires using all speed, maneuverability and countermeasures available. Therefore, using the original poster's example, if you mount a PPC and a med laser on a Spider (a measly 15 point alpha strike, btw), it means something else has been taken from the mech: it is slower and/or has less armor, and is correspondingly easier to kill. That seems beyond controversy to me. I have tried using those builds, and had little success. You have to be a very good pilot to survive in that kind of build.

That being said, the other key to being an effective Spider pilot means choosing your targets and situations wisely. If you are being taken advantage of by Spiders in combat, it may mean that you are playing a role which a skilled Spider pilot can easily exploit.

[DEMAX51]

The spider definitely has hitbox issues, and I'm sure they'll be addressed sooner or later, but to say that Spiders are anywhere near as bad as the Raven 3L had been is an overstatement.

But they do, very clearly, need to be fixed.

Edited by DEMAX51, 23 July 2013 - 11:47 AM.

[Tesunie]

http://mwomercs.com/...80#entry2470380

What a whole team of Spiders did... Kinda funny.

[ohtochooseaname]

I think it's more of an HSR problem than anything else. It's higher ping Spiders, which are having the most issues: all the really high scores are usually accompanied by a 100+ ping.

[ohtochooseaname]

Tesunie, on 23 July 2013 - 11:46 AM, said:

http://mwomercs.com/...80#entry2470380

What a whole team of Spiders did... Kinda funny.

Well, they didn't really have very good builds...flamer + ml?

[Clit Beastwood]

Kyocera, on 23 July 2013 - 10:05 AM, said:

I die enough times in my spider to know it isn't that OP at all. There are a handful of really pro spider pilots who you'll have trouble with, just the same as you find some very skilled assault pilots.

You just have to bide your time until they're moving in a straight line away from you, land after jump jetting or come to a stop. I don't normally have too much trouble taking out not so pro spider pilots with a bit of patience, be it with ballistics or lasers.

I'm a 90% spider pilot, almost always in my rickety old 5d with LL and 2ML - I average 440 damage a game with 1-2 kills, yesterday several 600 damage games. That being said, it went like this

Game 1 - zoomed around teasing an atlas away from his team. Once he was away from his team I killed him. Went back, got a stalker with 4 ppc's to chase me. Dude was alphaing me to the face with regular ppc's, then shutting down. I killed him. I was accused of cheating by both, because a light can't beat an assault in a fair fight.

Game 2 - River city night - ran tunnels at 152kph, popped out the other side and instantly exploded. took 4 erppc's to center torso and exploded. I laughed my tail off and congratulated the shooter for a great shot.

Game 3 - 2 assault kills

Game 4 - 2 assault kills 1 dragon kill

Game 5 - destroyed very quickly by a 4man of centurions with ac20's

What I would say is that the spider isn't overpowered, it's easier to hit than it used to be, but once I moved from 130kph to speed tweaked 152, nobody knows how to hit me. I also tend to play with the 10key on my keyboard while running around, as it makes my speed erratic and makes me hard to lead. I die much more often to lasers than I do to ppc's. I've also had a hard time killing spiders in my stalker, but only with PPC's. With lasers, I can just light saber their legs off then pop the remaining leg. I think many people get caught up watching the animations that they don't watch the paper doll. Yes - all 4 ppc'***** my spider, no I did not die - I was whipping my mouse back and forth to spread the damage as much as possible. The PPC'***** all over my mech, because I was running towards you at 152kph and it messes up your convergence. I think what we have is a culture of "I AM GREAT AND IF I DIE WHATEVER KILLED ME IS OVERPOWERED"

The above being said, I also score 300-400 damage games with my deaths knell, same with jenners, though I die *a lot* in jenners (darn that CT!). I don't think they're overpowered, I think many people who've never spent time in them like to call them OP because they don't know any better. Everyone starts the game and immediately goes heavier and heavier - a "certification and training regimen" would be awesome - if you had to *earn* your way to heavier mech classes, I think everyone would a) know how to drive mechs, and understand each class of mech a little better.

[Kazly]

So, is it "sometimes" spider hit boxes are screwed? Or "always" ?

I would like to know the answer before continuing an argument.

[Slumu]

"Sometimes" for me. Most of the time it seems fine to me, but sometimes, like today, a Spider goes all Highlander (not the Mech, the not dying Scotish one ) on me and takes 2 ERPPCs and an AC20 to the Center Torso and just turns yellow.

[Postumus]

ohtochooseaname, on 23 July 2013 - 01:17 PM, said:

I think it's more of an HSR problem than anything else. It's higher ping Spiders, which are having the most issues: all the really high scores are usually accompanied by a 100+ ping.

Kyocera, on 23 July 2013 - 07:35 AM, said:

Notice that the Spider pilot here with the ridiculous score is running at 155 ping. Pretty good anecdotal evidence for the HSR hypothesis. Spiders are tiny, so they're hard to hit in the first place, hit registration is all over the place right now anyways, and high/fluctuating pings is what sets off the HSR hit registration problems.

Before we go on a spider hunt, wait until they fix the hit reg issues in the next couple of patches. Then we'll see how things stand. Implementing "fixes" that put a bandaid over the underlying problem is what causes some of the most egregious balance issues. The reason we had the great Poptart scourge of 2013 is because PPCs had their damage, heat, and projectile speed buffed, because HSR was not yet implemented and trying to hit ANYTHING was a crap shoot. The devs assumed that if you were only hitting part of the time, you could fix the issue by making those shots do more damage. Fast forward to ballistic HSR, and the PPC buffs are multiplied by the hit registration/ hitbox / netcode fixes.

If you go and nerf spiders now, when they do actually fix hit registration (again) they will die from a light breeze.

[Tesunie]

ohtochooseaname, on 23 July 2013 - 01:22 PM, said:

Well, they didn't really have very good builds...flamer + ml?

They were running stock mech loadouts. They where having a day of stock mechs only. But still... they only killed two mechs with stock spiders. If they were so invincible, they should have killed half the enemy team or more before they lost. Kinda the point. Spiders are Spiders. They aren't invincible, just fast, small and very lightly armed. Even my large 2 med laser version is considered lightly armed. We can be one shot killed by a dual PPC hit. I've had it happen to be before. Shut down, never restarted...

[KKillian]

Hitbox in general is kinda goofy, I cant tell you the amount of times I've been hit by a sniper directly infront of me in many different mechs and the damage registers on the rear of the mech. Not overly common but happens often enough to ruin a match here and there.

On the subject, pulse lasers and ac20 put down spiders no problem in my exp although I do have a pretty good ping. 2-3 rounds to the torso and if they havent run off they die. I can totally agree PPC's do not seem to register properly against spiders or many other mechs for that matter. I cannot agree that spiders are very scary, unless completely ignored or the entire team decides to chase... focused medium lasers will not kill one unless it's standing still. Small pulse Jenner however tears them apart like paper.

[Braggart]

Spiders are broken.

No other light mech is that hard to destroy. The commando is 5 tons lighter, and easier to hit.

I have seen shots not count against a legged spider.

Its not about not people being unable to aim. People destroy every other mech just fine, but somehow the spider ignores all kinds of damage other mechs would take. Hitboxes are broken on this mech.


are spiders really deadly, not really, you ignore them to face the greater threats, but the ability for the spider to ignore damage they should take is a problem.

Edited by Braggart, 23 July 2013 - 02:58 PM.

[Tesunie]

Commando may be 5 tons lighter, but it's bigger as well. (As they describe, missile pods take up more volume than mass, which makes missile mechs typically look larger in comparison.) The size of the Commando makes it a little easier to hit. It also doesn't have as thin of arms, so shots that go between the arm and torso has more clearance for a Spider than a Commando. Also, Spiders tend to get ignored more often than not I find. People will focus on larger targets, but if they do focus on you, and you stop for a moment, you are toast. Leg gone? Don't expect to get much farther on that run. Maybe one more shot before you are down and out.

As I'm observing while piloting a Spider, many shots I feel I got (held the laser on them), I'm finding out I didn't actually stay on for long. I keep splashing damage around, which is what others are doing to me in return. A laser heavy mech tends to make me shy away from.

Then again, I've had some Centurion pilot in a game today end up forcing me to run away. Very accurate on hitting me with that AC10. He had the skill to take me on and win, over time. So, I ran and confronted a PPC based Atlas instead, pestered him, and chased a Jenner around for a bit.