74 replies to this topic

[FrupertApricot]

Seems like we are hitting a tipping point with the kintaro here.

[redlance]

not only that but some mechs really need their hit box sizes re examined.

for example the cicada, that thing is all CT, would be an incredible mech if i could hide my side torso's by torso twisting, even when i run away i take CT damage.

now that the raven streak machine has fallen off can we UN NERF the leg hit boxes?

mech scale and hit-boxes need to be looked at all across the board. but PGI wont ever do it. you know they wont.

[MrZakalwe]

Yeah there are some non-obvious ones as well; I pilot a Stalker a lot (and I mean a lot) and I think they could do with being slightly larger- my frontal profile is tiny. I don't mind the large side torsos because those are what allows the Stalker to compete with Highlanders etc as a direct fire platform but just being a little larger would be nice.

Awesomes need a tone down to the size of their center torsos (currently the size of Texas).

Jenners could do with having side torsos on more than a technical level.

Then there are the obvious ones in the medium bracket

[Onmyoudo]

The long and short of it is, they say they cannot re-scale some mechs because it would a) take a lot of work and they're all compared to each other for each new mech that is made. As it is evident that mechs are often WAY oversized then something about the way they're compared to all the other mechs to determine that initial size is broken. I haven't actually played for a while so this may be a little off, someone can correct me as necessary.

Raven - hitboxes borked.
Jenner - seems fine. Hitboxes/size appropriate.
Commando - fine.
Spider - hitboxes mega borked.

Cicada - massive (for its tonnage), walking centre torso.
Hunchback - size appropriate, MASSIVE right torso where all the weaponry is stored that can be hit from literally any angle.
Trebuchet - huge.
Centurion - very tall, hitboxes borked. Sometimes nigh unkillable, which is the only thing that doesn't make it a walking deathtrap.
Blackjack - ??? Not played against any. Seems alright.
Kintaro - bigger centre torso than some light mechs, really tall. Also fat. All-around terrible. Called this from the first screenshot.

Catapult - pretty tall. Ears stick out from miles away, comparatively not so bad.
Cataphract - fine.
Jagermech - fine.
Dragon - huge centre torso.
Quickdraw - huge everything. The poster-boy for poorly scaled mechs before the Kintaro showed up.

Highlander - fine.
Atlas - fine.
Victor - ??? Not played since they were introduced.
Stalker - much smaller than the other assaults, tiny front profile.
Awesome - fat and slow, but without the tonnage benefits of the other assaults. A bullet magnet.

From that list I count (potentially) 8 mechs that seem appropriate. Out of 20. That's a 40% hit rate, guys. Time to go back to the drawing board.

[Joseph Mallan]

The Kintaro is as big as my Victor! I'm a Steiner not a 1st Prince.

[Dimento Graven]

redlance, on 11 August 2013 - 11:13 PM, said:

not only that but some mechs really need their hit box sizes re examined.

Only if we find 'mechs whose hit boxes aren't covering the appropriate area.

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for example the cicada, that thing is all CT, would be an incredible mech if i could hide my side torso's by torso twisting, even when i run away i take CT damage.

The issue with this is, Cicada's have no significant arms like an actual humanoid 'mech does, or even in line with Catapults. No arms means less torso twisting protection available.

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now that the raven streak machine has fallen off can we UN NERF the leg hit boxes?

I think the 'ALSO hit' affect needs to be eliminated. Hitting a Raven in the right arm should not 'ALSO hit' the left leg.

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mech scale and hit-boxes need to be looked at all across the board. but PGI wont ever do it. you know they wont.

There's LORE evidence going both ways on that.
Original FASA blue print poster:

Note the size of height of the Locust compared to the Warhammer and BattleMaster.

Scanned image possibly from a BT source book:

Note the sizes of the 4 IS 'mechs.

I'm willing to have 'mech sizes re-examined.

Oh, but I'd like the poll to have a 'Possibly' option, because that's what I'd select...

Edited by Dimento Graven, 12 August 2013 - 07:21 AM.

[BlueVisionWarrior Online]

Fine by me if you wanna put CW off for a couple MORE months, ditch UI2.0 this year at all, and totally stop the flow of any new mechs for the foreseeable future.

They also need to go back and do a pass on all the weapon meshes for every mech as well as figure out wtf to do with missile tubes.

Size is like meh IMO.

[armyof1]

I think it's all due to pure laziness/cheapness, by not wanting to make a new wire-frame for every mech they just re-use some of them several times and thus we end up with Highlander, Victor, Quickdraw and now even Kintaro most probably sharing the same wire-frame. The guys designing the mechs aren't blind, they know what they're doing but they just keep on doing it to save time.

Edited by armyof1, 12 August 2013 - 07:28 AM.

[GingerBang]

Definitely not all the mechs. Obviously some are worse than others, and most have at least one flaw, but come on just about the entire medium class is just ruined. Centurions are HUGE and super bulky, Trebuchets are taller than a lot of heavies without having any of the "empty space" PGI claims to use to balance sizes. Cicadas at times don't even register cockpit damage, and have a CT the size of Miami. I know I don't even have to go into what a failure the Golden Boy's size is. That one is just pathetic. I refuse to call that mech a Kintaro, because it is not. This is more than just the size for the GB though, i mean my god it bears zero resemblance to an actual kintaro. Zero, none, zilch, nada. The only medium without any problems with design is the blackjack. It's like this game is a high school project, and everyone was in such a rush to get their part done nobody ever even looked at the rest of the game to see if it scales until it was too late. A serious amateur mistake not planning ahead like this.

[Dimento Graven]

Onmyoudo, on 12 August 2013 - 05:29 AM, said:

Raven - hitboxes borked.
Jenner - seems fine. Hitboxes/size appropriate.
Commando - fine.
Spider - hitboxes mega borked.

Raven, and many others suffer from an 'ALSO hit' situation. No matter what get hit on a Raven, the right leg (or maybe it's the left) is ALSO hit. Spider does NOT suffer that, the Spider has either a lag shield or has 'traveling' hit boxes that end up above, below, in front or behind the 'mech randomly (probably more indicating the lag shield than borked hit boxes).

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Cicada - massive (for its tonnage), walking centre torso.
Hunchback - size appropriate, MASSIVE right torso where all the weaponry is stored that can be hit from literally any angle.
Trebuchet - huge.
Centurion - very tall, hitboxes borked. Sometimes nigh unkillable, which is the only thing that doesn't make it a walking deathtrap.
Blackjack - ??? Not played against any. Seems alright.
Kintaro - bigger centre torso than some light mechs, really tall. Also fat. All-around terrible. Called this from the first screenshot.

The Cicada is almost fine as is, though one of it's torsos suffers from the 'ALSO hit' phenomenon, but considering the 'mech IS actually pretty much ALL torso (like the Locust will be), it's hard to tell. Hunchback's and Cents have 'special' hit boxes making them VERY difficult to kill. Yeah the boom box on the Hunch is an easy target, but after that's gone, it STILL takes an inordinate amount of hits to kill one, even a poorly piloted one.

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Catapult - pretty tall. Ears stick out from miles away, comparatively not so bad.
Cataphract - fine.
Jagermech - fine.
Dragon - huge centre torso.
Quickdraw - huge everything. The poster-boy for poorly scaled mechs before the Kintaro showed up.

Yep, a Cat's ears do stick out, as appropriate. Cataphract side torsos suffer the 'ALSO hit' phenomenon, and the Dragon, yeah it's supposed to have that huge torso. Nothing wrong there.

As far as the Quickdraw, I think that one MAY be fine and as often as they are showing up on the battlefield when I play, I think a lot of other folks feel the same, but I won't complain if the size of it is revisited.

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Highlander - fine.
Atlas - fine.
Victor - ??? Not played since they were introduced.
Stalker - much smaller than the other assaults, tiny front profile.
Awesome - fat and slow, but without the tonnage benefits of the other assaults. A bullet magnet.

Stalker a 'tiny front profile'? Wow... Totally disagree there, but I think it's appropriate for the 'mech, as far as your Awesome comments, it's obvious you and I haven't been on the same battlefield when I'm in one of my Awesomes. I 'might' be able to change your mind on that...

[GingerBang]

armyof1, on 12 August 2013 - 07:27 AM, said:

I think it's all due to pure laziness/cheapness, by not wanting to make a new wire-frame for every mech they just re-use some of them several times and thus we end up with Highlander, Victor, Quickdraw and now even Kintaro most probably sharing the same wire-frame. The guys designing the mechs aren't blind, they know what they're doing but they just keep on doing it to save time.

It just wreaks of last minute High School project.

[Jestun]

BlueVisionWarrior Online, on 12 August 2013 - 07:23 AM, said:

Fine by me if you wanna put CW off for a couple MORE months, ditch UI2.0 this year at all, and totally stop the flow of any new mechs for the foreseeable future.

They also need to go back and do a pass on all the weapon meshes for every mech as well as figure out wtf to do with missile tubes.

Size is like meh IMO.

I'm not sure how vital the model designers are to CW to be honest, personally I'd risk it.

[scJazz]

The answer is it is horrifically complicated!

Last night I asked "What is the Scale?" over in New Players and got this back in response.

http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__2646910

Seriously freaking awesome info and I thank Bishop Steiner and Adidos!

When you look at it though you can see the elephant in the room and it isn't "Mediums" are too big! The problem is there isn't enough range for granularity! The shortest mech is the Jenner at 9.3m and the tallest the Atlas at 17.6m leaving an astonishingly small range of 8.3m. To be quite clear this isn't really PGIs fault. They did the best they could with what poor, confused, and contradictory information from TT canon they had.

Fixing the scale isn't easy either! It isn't like opening up the models in 3DS, clicking scale and typing 75% and taduh!!! the Trebuchet is fixed. Every single broken model would need to be rebuilt from the ground up essentially and it is very important to note that this is not easy or quick! It is the exact opposite of easy and quick! They can't go in and do things like make the Assaults bigger in order to give a greater range either. The maps have been designed to allow certain paths, like the "Pipe Farm" near the boat in River City is tall enough to allow an Atlas to pass under it.

So the choices break down to...
Completely redoing absurd amounts of content for both models and maps.
Fixing hitboxes on the problem children like the Catapult's Head and the Awesome's Torso.

With the understanding that either fix must drain a significant portion of PGIs Art Department resources and in doing so stopping all work on new maps, new mechs, etc.

Not great choices and the law of diminishing returns applies in spades given the parameters of the problem. Just how much smaller can a Trebuchet or Centurion get? Having done all that work to shrink them by even 10% or 20% would anyone really be satisfied? That would make both around the size of the Hunchback and Cicada but is that really enough? Is it worth as much effort as would be required?

From the POV of the cranky customer the solution would have to be...
Having learned quite a bit over the last year about scale and how players play go back and redo every single model starting by making the Atlas 25m tall or about 50% bigger while making the Commando 7m tall or about 20% smaller and then rescaling every design between them. A project that with bug fixes, map tweaks, and the actual work would require the entire Art Team literally months to accomplish while stopping work on everything else.

From the POV of the Business Owner the above is obviously insane and not doable.

[Dimento Graven]

The ONE TRO I don't have... Made a note, guess I'll take a trip down to ye old comic shoppe and get one...

I'd like to read that page in context of preceding and subsequent material to ensure it means what, on the face of it, it appears to mean...

[Mechteric]

Not all of them, thats just silly. Only like 5 really need it.

[verybad]

I agree, some are miss-sized, however, it won't happen, because they'd have to redo animation and that's a lot of work. They need to get it right first time/

[Charons Little Helper]

Nearly all mechs sans lights need to be scaled down. The pictures people show are right. An atlas at 4x the weight shouldn't be anywhere near double the height of a commando (its easily that - likely considerably more - I haven't looked that close) . Assuming equal proportions (Atlas looks beefier to me if anything) double the height would mean 8x the weight. (2^3 - yay math)

[MrZakalwe]

Charons Little Helper, on 12 August 2013 - 09:33 AM, said:

Nearly all mechs sans lights need to be scaled down. The pictures people show are right. An atlas at 4x the weight shouldn't be anywhere near double the height of a commando (its easily that - likely considerably more - I haven't looked that close) . Assuming equal proportions (Atlas looks beefier to me if anything) double the height would mean 8x the weight. (2^3 - yay math)

This is one area where they need to move away from canon and face up to the reality of an arena shooter- profiles really matter in this and they didn't matter in table top.

They either need to do some resizing or add some perks to the weaker chassis to counterbalance the disadvantages.

[Dimento Graven]

Charons Little Helper, on 12 August 2013 - 09:33 AM, said:

Nearly all mechs sans lights need to be scaled down. The pictures people show are right. An atlas at 4x the weight shouldn't be anywhere near double the height of a commando (its easily that - likely considerably more - I haven't looked that close) . Assuming equal proportions (Atlas looks beefier to me if anything) double the height would mean 8x the weight. (2^3 - yay math)

It's not just the height though, it's also the broadness and thickness. There's 2 more dimensions where the Atlas is 'bigger' than a Commando.

I think most 'mechs are fine, and can even live with the BJ and Kintaro as is, but I won't complain if the 'mechs are resized.

Edited by Dimento Graven, 12 August 2013 - 09:46 AM.

[Dimento Graven]

Found a source for a PDF version of the 3039 Technical Read Out, and page 303 shows the IS 'mechs.

Keep in mind though even this source acknowledges that the 'height to weight ratio we're assuming is not a hard and fast, sacrosanct 'rule'.

First off the title of the page itself, "General Size Comparison Chart", meaning to applied 'in general' not specific or binding.

Then there's the note at the bottom of the page: 'Although size varies individually among units, this scale dhows the relative size difference in each weight class', allowing for exceptions.

Are the Quickdraw and Kintaro exceptions? I don't know, I don't have any specific data on those, however, I'm not absolutely opposed to seeing their sizes changed given the evidence we have.

But the generality we're seeing here makes a case for a very tall Locust, and we do have data on that 'mech, at least.

The only remaining questions I have are where did the Omnimech page and the drop ship pages in that pic come from?