88 replies to this topic

[Joseph Mallan]

Khobai, on 08 August 2013 - 12:50 PM, said:

No we should make people want to play lights and mediums by buffing them. I already said as much.

Weight limits are dumb. They dont fix the actual problem... they just increase the queue time and make the queue bottleneck by the scarcity light and medium pilots. I for one do not want triple wait times on queues.

What needs to be done is to encourage the player base to play all four weight classes in roughty equal proportion.

But how do you buff a light Mech without making it SuperMech? Right now I have been reading a lot of Hits not registering... AS it stands it should have the competitive crowd running for their Jenners an Spiders.

I agree that weight restrictions are just "Dumb Button" at work, Weigh matching should be reestablished for non Clan Invasion Campaign drops. (Clanners will need to be handled in a totally different fashion).

[3rdworld]

James The Fox Dixon, on 08 August 2013 - 12:27 PM, said:

If you want a well balanced force then you would have to use certain mech weights to fulfill those roles. In your plan, you are missing medium mechs from your force, namely the ECM Cicada, that can hunt opposing lights or supplement the main force through the use of high speed and maneuverability. This means that another force composition can take you apart at their leisure, namely Light Horse/Strikers. The Strikers/Light Horse would chew up your light lance through swarm tactics rendering your heavy and assault mechs blind. Through the use of harassment tactics it could separate your two remaining lances from each other then swarm them one by one. Just because you can stack your force mech with heavier mechs does not mean that you can automatically win against another force composition that isn't as heavy as yours.

Your force also lacks in ECM, so that Light Horse/Striker unit can attack with impunity as they do have ECM and other information warfare goodies.

Sounds great in theory. At high levels it doesn't work that way. Can a unit twice as skilled kill a heavier drop? Sure, but 2 units that are fairly equal in skill, the heavier team is at a distinct advantage. And if you are referring to pug matches, weight makes a huge difference.

Cicadas are jenner food, and ECM is not even close to a requirement.

[James The Fox Dixon]

Khobai, on 08 August 2013 - 12:50 PM, said:

No we should make people want to play lights and mediums by buffing them. I already said as much.

Weight limits are dumb. They dont fix the actual problem... they just increase the queue time and make the queue bottleneck by the scarcity light and medium pilots. I for one do not want triple wait times on queues.

What needs to be done is to encourage the player base to play all four weight classes in roughty equal proportion.

This is a buff. Since each formation is limited by tonnage and weight class restrictions. Currently there isn't any restrictions and guess what? People will pilot heavy and assaults while bypassing lights and mediums. That is the reason for the scarcity of those mech classes.

Yes, because we all know that you wrote and created the Battletech universe. They do fix the actual problem, which wasn't a problem during closed beta as the MM made matches based upon weight class. I'm sure you recall that there were a LOT less heavy and assault mechs because of it. You also have no proof that it would increase wait times to get a match. The MM is programmed to look for certain things, so it can be programmed to look for someone choosing their force mix and their match type.

You want to encourage playing of other weight classes. Great, so do I, except my way has backing from the universe itself and yours doesn't. Think back to closed beta when the MM assigned people to matches based upon what they piloted. If you dropped with a force mix of 2-2-2-2 then you were guaranteed to face against 2-2-2-2. Only rarely did it throw in an extra mech of a weight class that you had instead of the same amount that was on your side.

Edited by James The Fox Dixon, 08 August 2013 - 01:02 PM.

[Dedzone]

Khobai, on 08 August 2013 - 12:39 PM, said:

Exactly. Its a bad fix at that.

Rather than encouraging people to play lights and mediums youre FORCING them to. But youre not fixing the reasons why people dont want to play them.

Whats going to happen if you dont make people want to play lights and mediums but bottleneck games with weight limits is that queue times are going increase significantly due to a shortage of light and medium pilots.

This is what I feel should be done:
1) Make lights and mediums worth piloting.
2) Impose a min limit of 2 of each weight class in 12v12.

That is similar to weight limits but not as ridiculous.

I don't know about anyone else but I fail to see a lack of medium and light pilots in just about any game I drop. The problem we are having is that in order to win in ANY game right now, you either have to have a hard-hitting heavy or an assault mech. If you have a 12v12 with 5 lights on it, you are not going to win in an upright brawl with the other team having maybe 10 assault and 2 mediums. You might win with capping but you never know.

With tonnage restrictions, you are directing players to use the other weight classes. If a map is only given a weight droppage of say, 700 tons, and you have 5 people in assaults waiting in a queue then yes, SOME of those people might have to wait a bit. But once one map/team is filled those who have been waiting in those assaults longer will be queued for the next map at the front of the line and still be able to pilot their assault. You won't be forcing anyone to change their class.

But lets face it, everyone except the new players in this this game have more than one class of mech. I really don't foresee the doom and gloom you and some others are trying to portray that will happen about forcing people to play a certain class.

I would GREATLY sit there and wait a couple mins to find a team and a drop on ANYTHING that had a semblance to a real team makeup than to drop in nothing but 12v12 assaults-online.

Tonnage restrictions have been far too long in coming!

[3rdworld]

Joseph Mallan, on 08 August 2013 - 12:56 PM, said:

But how do you buff a light Mech without making it SuperMech? Right now I have been reading a lot of Hits not registering... AS it stands it should have the competitive crowd running for their Jenners an Spiders.

I agree that weight restrictions are just "Dumb Button" at work, Weigh matching should be reestablished for non Clan Invasion Campaign drops. (Clanners will need to be handled in a totally different fashion).

Lights aren't really having issues at the moment. Caps taking forever have hurt them though. Mediums & any heavy not the cataphract are step-children though.

[James The Fox Dixon]

Praetor Shepard, on 08 August 2013 - 12:54 PM, said:

Well, in theory, the 920 tons could allow for a 12 mech force like this:

Atlas D-DC - 100
Atlas D-DC
Atlas D-DC
Atlas D-DC
Orion -75
Orion
Orion
Orion
Orion
Shadowhawk / Golden Boy - 55
Shadowhawk
RVN-3L / Jenner - 35

That would be an illegal drop and you would fail to find a match. For the 920 tons I took the maximum weight allowed for each lance which was 4x55 ton mechs, 4x75 ton mechs, and 4x100 ton mechs. That works out to be for the first lance: 220 tons, second lance: 300 tons, and the third lance: 400 tons.

3rdworld, on 08 August 2013 - 12:56 PM, said:

Sounds great in theory. At high levels it doesn't work that way. Can a unit twice as skilled kill a heavier drop? Sure, but 2 units that are fairly equal in skill, the heavier team is at a distinct advantage. And if you are referring to pug matches, weight makes a huge difference.

Cicadas are jenner food, and ECM is not even close to a requirement.

Funny, but my unit dropped last night in a 12 vs. 12 and we had a balanced force mix. We won due to superior tactics against an enemy that outweighed us by 400 tons.

[Khobai]

Quote

But how do you buff a light Mech without making it SuperMech?

Simple. You give them non-combat utility. Lights are not supposed to be combat mechs. They are supposed to be for scouting, spotting, capping, electronic warfare, etc... Lights are supposed to excel at all of the non-combat roles in the game. While the Medium mech is the first real combat weight class.

The problem is you have light mechs like the Jenner which have insane combat capability and firepower that rivals even 60 ton mechs. So the Jenner would probably have to be nerfed if something like this was implemented. Likely a nerf to its max speed so it can no longer outrun all other lights.

[Charons Little Helper]

Having three different lance types for each side would only increase the cue for people who kept wanting to play assault mechs. It wouldn't be long for anyone playing something unpopular.

Mediums wouldn't have to be as powerful as assaults (really - they shouldn't be) if every side had to have some. No one would expect as much from them as assaults - but that'd be fine if your team wasn't giving up having another assault mech for each medium.

I for one would enjoy playing what everyone knew to be a mech less powerful by design if everyone wasn't grumpy at me for hurting the group's chances by not playing a top tier mech.

Edited by Charons Little Helper, 08 August 2013 - 01:08 PM.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

James The Fox Dixon, on 08 August 2013 - 01:04 PM, said:

That would be an illegal drop and you would fail to find a match. For the 920 tons I took the maximum weight allowed for each lance which was 4x55 ton mechs, 4x75 ton mechs, and 4x100 ton mechs. That works out to be for the first lance: 220 tons, second lance: 300 tons, and the third lance: 400 tons.

In which case, I'm curious to the limits on Lances then (for the Heavy Assault and Dragoons at least)?
Because reorganized, two lances could also be 310 and the third 300. I guess I'm missing something.

Lance 1
100
100
75
35

Lance 2
100
100
55
55

Lance 3
75
75
75
75

[James The Fox Dixon]

Khobai, on 08 August 2013 - 01:06 PM, said:

Simple. You give them non-combat utility. Lights are not supposed to be combat mechs. They are supposed to be for scouting, spotting, capping, electronic warfare, etc... Lights are supposed to excel at all of the non-combat roles in the game. While the Medium mech is the first real combat weight class.

The problem is you have light mechs like the Jenner which have insane combat capability and firepower that rivals even 60 ton mechs. So the Jenner would probably have to be nerfed if something like this was implemented. Likely a nerf to its max speed so it can no longer outrun all other lights.

Light mechs are not just for what you said. In fact, you deliberately left out their combat ability. Some light mechs are designed for anti-infantry work (Spider 5K) or are designed to combat other mechs (Jenners). According to you, the Eridani Light Horse and other Light Horse/Striker Regiments never got into combat against other mech units.

Praetor Shepard, on 08 August 2013 - 01:14 PM, said:

In which case, I'm curious to the limits on Lances then (for the Heavy Assault and Dragoons at least)?
Because reorganized, two lances could also be 310 and the third 300. I guess I'm missing something.

Lance 1
100
100
75
35

Lance 2
100
100
55
55

Lance 3
75
75
75
75

Yes, you're missing the restriction on placement. You also have 5 75 ton mechs and that is an illegal force mix for Heavy/Assault. This is what each lance would look like in game and place the units in the right lance.

1 recon lance [1-4 light mechs or 1-4 medium mechs] and 2 lances of Heavy-Assault mechs [4-5 heavy mechs, and 3-4 assault mechs].

[3rdworld]

VanillaG, on 08 August 2013 - 12:29 PM, said:

I disagree. Putting in restrictions make every mechs useful. Currently without restrictions everyone is moving toward bigger is better. How would your sample drop deck look if you had a max tonnage of 750? The tricky part is finding the sweet spots for tonnage where have to make a decision between bringing "good" mechs at a certain weight class and "bad" mechs in a different class. Setup properly it should be impossible to bring only "good" mechs.

35*4
70*5
85*2
90*1
750

Also GL. I do our Marik drop decks. There are more than enough options to avoid ever "having" to take a cicada or dragon or awesome or any of the other crap mechs.

Edited by 3rdworld, 08 August 2013 - 01:26 PM.

[Trauglodyte]

I'm ok with weight limitations just as I was ok with weight class matching. The only problem with the latter is that it was nothing but the heaviest of the weight class in every fight and it does nothing to prevent games where 50% or more of each battle formation are made up of Assault mechs. I want to see the full utilization of every mech/mech weight but we don't have that because PPC+Gauss wins.

[3rdworld]

James The Fox Dixon, on 08 August 2013 - 01:04 PM, said:

Funny, but my unit dropped last night in a 12 vs. 12 and we had a balanced force mix. We won due to superior tactics against an enemy that outweighed us by 400 tons.

Then you had more skill. I am pretty sure I mentioned that as a possibility.

Edited by 3rdworld, 08 August 2013 - 01:23 PM.

[Joseph Mallan]

Khobai, on 08 August 2013 - 01:06 PM, said:

Simple. You give them non-combat utility. Lights are not supposed to be combat mechs. They are supposed to be for scouting, spotting, capping, electronic warfare, etc... Lights are supposed to excel at all of the non-combat roles in the game. While the Medium mech is the first real combat weight class.

The problem is you have light mechs like the Jenner which have insane combat capability and firepower that rivals even 60 ton mechs. So the Jenner would probably have to be nerfed if something like this was implemented. Likely a nerf to its max speed so it can no longer outrun all other lights.

Most Lights I agree, specially for those in game, but there are some that could probably be introduced that are combat units.

Nerfing the Jenners speed may not go over well as it is one of the faster canon light builds.

It would be nice to see Scouting come back into vogue I must confess.

[Trauglodyte]

Mech speed is one of the worst injustices this game has bastardized. The Cicada and Spider were two of the fastest mechs ever built and now they're just as slow as the rest of the Lights. Hell, the Centurion goes almost as fast as most Lights.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

James The Fox Dixon, on 08 August 2013 - 01:18 PM, said:

Yes, you're missing the restriction on placement. You also have 5 75 ton mechs and that is an illegal force mix for Heavy/Assault. This is what each lance would look like in game and place the units in the right lance.

1 recon lance [1-4 light mechs or 1-4 medium mechs] and 2 lances of Heavy-Assault mechs [4-5 heavy mechs, and 3-4 assault mechs].

Oh, so trade one 75 Heavy for a 55 Medium. So then, 900 with the Lance limit seems like it's still possible that way.



Then, it might also be possible to have a 55 ton mech replace the light also, I guess, to get to 920 max, if it's legal to drop without lights.

Edited by Praetor Shepard, 08 August 2013 - 01:28 PM.

[James The Fox Dixon]

Trauglodyte, on 08 August 2013 - 01:26 PM, said:

Mech speed is one of the worst injustices this game has bastardized. The Cicada and Spider were two of the fastest mechs ever built and now they're just as slow as the rest of the Lights. Hell, the Centurion goes almost as fast as most Lights.

On this I would agree. The Spider should be much, much faster then the Jenner. With the introduction of the Locust impending, there are several variants that get close the 200 kph mark or exceed it by quite a bit. Yes, I'm looking at the LCT-6M that has a 280 XL engine and MASC that goes up to 302.4 kph.

Edited by James The Fox Dixon, 08 August 2013 - 01:29 PM.

[James The Fox Dixon]

Charons Little Helper, on 08 August 2013 - 01:06 PM, said:

Having three different lance types for each side would only increase the cue for people who kept wanting to play assault mechs. It wouldn't be long for anyone playing something unpopular.

Mediums wouldn't have to be as powerful as assaults (really - they shouldn't be) if every side had to have some. No one would expect as much from them as assaults - but that'd be fine if your team wasn't giving up having another assault mech for each medium.

I for one would enjoy playing what everyone knew to be a mech less powerful by design if everyone wasn't grumpy at me for hurting the group's chances by not playing a top tier mech.

Actually, it would increase the assault pilot's wait time since a good chunk of people would have moved on to balanced weight drops.

Praetor Shepard, on 08 August 2013 - 01:27 PM, said:

Oh, so trade one 75 Heavy for a 55 Medium. So then, 900 with the Lance limit seems like it's still possible that way.


Then, it might also be possible to have a 55 ton mech replace the light also, I guess, to get to 920 max, if it's legal to drop without lights.

You could do that, but you would be deficient in scouting. Just remember any of the force compositions can be countered by another force composition. In your drop, I would direct a swarm of 8 light and medium mechs all over your 55 tonners once they were out of range of direct support of your other lances. The 8 lights would rip the 55 tonners apart in no time then proceed to do that to the next group of 4 through baiting and ambushes.

A note about me, I prefer Light Horse over the other force comps, so I think in those terms.

Edited by James The Fox Dixon, 08 August 2013 - 01:35 PM.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

James The Fox Dixon, on 08 August 2013 - 01:33 PM, said:

You could do that, but you would be deficient in scouting. Just remember any of the force compositions can be countered by another force composition. In your drop, I would direct a swarm of 8 mechs all over your 55 tonners once they were out of range of direct support of your other lances. The 8 lights would rip the 55 tonners apart in no time then proceed to do that to the next group of 4 through baiting and ambushes.

But they'd have the Atlases do the scouting...

Seriously though, I figure seeing such groups out there anyway.
And I've seen a lot of very good Atlas and medium pilots out there, so I figure it depends on whose using those mechs too.

[James The Fox Dixon]

Praetor Shepard, on 08 August 2013 - 01:39 PM, said:

But they'd have the Atlases do the scouting...

Seriously though, I figure seeing such groups out there anyway.
And I've seen a lot of very good Atlas and medium pilots out there, so I figure it depends on whose using those mechs too.

Yup, but I expect to see a Steiner fist next to their names.