Chronojam, on 13 August 2013 - 01:31 PM, said:
The idea is to make it so you can crit engines, actuators, etc. and struggle to control a dying mech rather than the current situation where mechs die so quickly it would not currently matter if they added actuator crits. Without rebalancing health, nobody's aiming for the arms when they fire their long-range high-alpha flavor-of-the-year weapons.
Sounds like fun. Especially the idea that as you take (internal) damage, you slowly start losing capabilities. Critical hits (on integrated equipment like gyros, actuators, engine) would be one of the best additions to the game; not only would it make every fight more interesting, it would also go a VERY long way towards minimizing the high-alpha pinpoint-damage meta. And most importantly, it would do this by a) NOT introducing some needless, complicated, unintuitive, and frankly outright bizarre system based around spirits of the dead, and b) being immersive, and entertaining.
On a similar note, they should really also introduce some of the traditional TT heat & movement penalties. Lower accuracy and slower response times with high heat/fast running speeds/jump jet use. This would accomplish everything the Ghost Heat mechanic was meant to do, but it would be far more intuitive, and more realistic (immersive) as well. You don't suddenly burn your hand on a stove once it reaches 100 degrees or whatever, while feeling fine at 99. There's a gradual increase in pain as the temperature goes up. Same with heat effects on anything else - cannon barrels, car engines, space shuttle re-entry ablative tiles... While we're at it - increase the insanely short shut-down times as well. There's nothing fun about watching slugfests between heavies & assaults on Tourmaline/Caustic/Terra turn into ShutdownWarrior: Online. Everyone just keeps the fire-shutdown-startup-fire-shutdown-startup pattern going and it's just silly. The Ghost Heat mechanic did diminish this somewhat, but let's not go there(again)... Shutting down is supposed to be dangerous. Something you really want to avoid at all costs, always. Once, maybe twice in a lifetime should getting off that one extra shot at the cost of losing ALL defensive capabilities sound like a good idea. Currently, it's little more than an inconvenience most of the time.
Anyway, back on point. The concept of increasing a 'mech's internal survivability in order to iimplement critical damage to integrated systems, although a great concept itself, does not necessarily require increasing a 'mech's
overall durability. Increase the internal structure's hitpoints, by a lot if need be; but you can also lower the armor by an adequate (not necessarily correlative) amount as well. This might seem like a bad idea on its face, but it's really not something that could be known without live testing. One example would be that, if armor values stay high on top of IS values having been increased, and everyone's arm actuators and gyros start getting locked up, meaning you can't aim for **** anymore... then what should have been a fun idea by increasing battle duration, suddenly becomes a massive PITA as you spend the next half hour trying to land a few measly medium laser shots on the enemy's torso. Boring and frustrating, not fun and rewarding. As I said though, that would require actual in-game live testing to see how it works out.
Gwaihir, on 13 August 2013 - 12:34 PM, said:
Uh.. I'm not sure which game you've been playing, sadly, but a good pilot in a heavy being focused by three other (non light) 'Mechs does not live very long at all. Unless you consider 10-15 seconds long enough I guess?
If you're being FOCUSED, by THREE enemies at once, you SHOULD NOT survive for a long time! I cannot envision any sort of rational justification for being able to survive a situation like that for any respectable amount of time, unless they are bad pilots and you're a good one(but this already happens in the game regularly).
That's a lot of firepower. If you can survive that sort of engagement for any decent length of time, how long do you think it would take to go one-on-one with an enemy? It might sound fun in theory, but I'm guessing that slowly chipping away at each others' paint jobs for fifteen minutes wouldn't be very satisfying in reality. And it certainly wouldn't give any sensation that you're carrying immense loads of firepower.
Edited by Bloodweaver, 14 August 2013 - 12:00 PM.