Account for the translation to Real Time vs Turn Based.
In the Real Time game online, you can fire faster than in the abstracted Turn Based game, not to mention the goal of longer battles than in tabletop (20 entire turns in a TT game would translate into about 3 minutes worth of MWO time... but the game is set for up to 5 times that long).
The problem with this is the unbalancing of mechs by weight. The lighter your mech is... the less armor it has. This makes sense and is in line with TT. The problem is... by simply doubling the armor values you EXACERBATE the balance of health points.
The Smallest Mech at current (though the lighter Locust and Flea are planned and announced), the Commando has a mere 4 tons of armor at stock. Compare this to the largest mech in the game, the Atlas, with 19 tons of stock armor. In this respect, the Atlas has a 15 ton armor advantage over the Commando. However, when you double the armor values you essentially double the "effective" tons of armor on a mech. So a Commando would have the equivalent of 8 tons of armor, while an Atlas would have the equivalent of 38 tons of armor. This gives the Atlas an effective advantage of 30 tons of armor!!!
This effects the lightest mechs the most, and the heaviest mechs the least, obviously. Thus, Light and Medium mechs are impacted the most (as can be seen in game).
The answer IS NOT to simply add more multiples to the armor of every mech in order to create a "longer game". This will only make the problem worse. Luckily, the developers have been hesitant to simply add more health.
I would very much like to bring this to the attention of the developers, and the attention of the community, and hopefully this topic is informative.
Moving forward, it would be impolite to merely criticize without at least attempting to offer a solution (Constructive Feed back over negative feedback).
One possible solution would be to use the Atlas as a model and apply a straightforward bump to all armor values based on the atlas. So the Atlas would keep it's armor value at around 614, while the Commando would get bumped up to about 368.
There are several problems with this. For one, the commando would now have 11.5 tons of armor. Almost HALF of it's entire weight. So how do you handle more armor without more weight. Does the Commando get Ghost Armor (lol)? Do you create several tiers of armor per weight, kind of like how jump jets weigh different amounts depending on how much your mech weighs (sounds complicated)?
I'm not sure what the best way to handle it is, but I believe that there is a better way. And I intend to work hard, think hard, and listen hard, so that we can all figure this out.
-Cormac
[EDIT] (Note: My suggestion is meant to imply that the goal should be to increase the overall 'heartyness' of the low end mechs to keep up with the higher end of the weight scale. This will allow for longer, more tactical games. I in no way endorse lowering armor of heavy or assault mechs. In fact I think their Armor Values are pretty spot on, and an increase to THEIR armor values might make them too good)
Edited by Natanael Cormac, 13 August 2013 - 04:03 PM.