74 replies to this topic

[Pale Jackal]

Viktor Drake, on 12 September 2013 - 12:58 PM, said:

I mean seriously, it should be pretty obvious that no matter how small the CT is in comparison to the ST, it will always be the place hit most often.

No, it clearly depends on the size of the center torso. It should be obvious that the larger something is, the more likely it will be hit.

Why do Jaegers lose their side torsos first, whereas Cataphracts lose their CTs first? Hitbox size. Cataphract CT protrudes a bit but is relatively minor.

I'm not saying 'mechs always need to lose their side torsos first, but in a lot of 'mechs, I'm going to lose my CT first, or I'm going to lose my side torso and then, shortly after, my center torso, because my center torso was already stripped of armor by the time they took out my side torso.

Edited by Pale Jackal, 12 September 2013 - 01:09 PM.

[One Medic Army]

PEEFsmash, on 12 September 2013 - 12:40 PM, said:

If you want dicerolls go to Vegas. Bad players should not stand a chance against players who are better than them. They should stand a chance against players of their own skill level. A perfect game would have the more skilled player winning 100% of the time. That isn't always possible due to incomplete information, and randomness of scouting direction, etc. However, in full-information games, any randomness should be eliminated from gameplay mechanics so that skill will triumph in as many cases as possible, and nothing to lower the frequency of those cases should be tolerated.

Dumbing down the game and making bads sometimes win important fights due to diceroll mechanics is what you want?! Really?

Not worth arguing with you, your mind is congealed, and that dead F2P (whatever it was) game is your ideal.

[HammerSwarm]

Viktor Drake, on 12 September 2013 - 12:58 PM, said:

Also it totally astounds me how dense people are in general. Their is two reasons why most of the damage you take is to the center torso.

One - the CT is the center mass on your mech. By pure instinct alone, anyone shooting at a target will always aim for center mass because you have a better chance to at least hit somewhere even if your a poor shot.

Two - The CT is a guarenteed kill every time. The only other target that guarentees a kill is the head and it is tiny in comparision.

I mean seriously, it should be pretty obvious that no matter how small the CT is in comparison to the ST, it will always be the place hit most often.

Everyone aims at the bullseye (or triple 20) in darts but sometimes you do miss. If you consider hitting the board a moral victory then yeah you still hit something. Sometimes you hit the wall (usually when you are a noob or you are drunk).

Now imagine your dart board is moving, and you are moving in a different direction shooting darts while turning. You might get your bulls eye, and you might hit the dart board, but the size of each does have an impact on how many you hit and where.

[Monky]

Viktor Drake, on 12 September 2013 - 12:58 PM, said:

I mean seriously, it should be pretty obvious that no matter how small the CT is in comparison to the ST, it will always be the place hit most often.

It is the place most often aimed for, and the place that will most often be the cause of a kill, however that doesn't equate to it being hit the most often. The ease of hitting the CT is the main factor in that, not how often it is aimed for or for what reason. For comparison, think about how often you've hit Centurion arms versus Jenner arms.

[General Taskeen]

Viktor Drake, on 12 September 2013 - 12:58 PM, said:

Totally defeat the purpose. Using an XL should always be a trade off of survivability verse saving weight for more weapons, armor and equipment. Otherwise there would be zero reason to use anything but an XL, they are just too good not to use if they don't effect your survivability.

I would like to add to this as well. An IS XL engine is meant to be major risk, unlike Clan XL or IS LFE. Of course, PGI could have simply programmed an XL "crit hit" in torso to lock the torso in place or slow the mech by 50% or whatever for real-time purposes, but they chose the "death" programming.

It is definitely obvious which Mechs are more at risk of XL and which are not. Jenners, for instance, are only power houses due to the incredibly huge XL's they fit and the tiny as heck Side Torso's. Using a smaller standard engine is guaranteed suicide, not because of the slow speed, but because of that easy to hit CT, even when twisting. Going fast and equipping an XL is the only way to mitigate that. I think that's pretty silly from a hitbox balancing perspective. Conversely, a Commando is actually very decent with a standard engine (going slow 97.2) and when I play it, it can easily end up a little walking zombie with damage spread everywhere, where as XL is actually a risk on a Commando.

Its understandable that some Mechs are going to have weirder hitboxes due to their odd-shapes, but those types of Mechs can also be carefully crafted regarding the hitboxes.

They did say they would look at some hitboxes, but I really think from now on more care needs to be taken when designing the CT area of any Mech introduced. That's all that we ask. Its just more work later anyways - the most recent example, the Kintaro, which took a month before fixed.

[HammerSwarm]

General Taskeen, on 12 September 2013 - 02:28 PM, said:

They did say they would look at some hitboxes, but I really think from now on more care needs to be taken when designing the CT area of any Mech introduced. That's all that we ask. Its just more work later anyways - the most recent example, the Kintaro, which took a month before fixed.

This thread was prompted by my experiences with the Kintaro and another thread I saw complaining that Orions suffered from the same sort of disorder.

[OneEyed Jack]

Personally, I think people jump on the bandwagon too much with screaming that pretty much every mech has an over-sized CT. I think there are a couple, but even most of those, it seems to be a design choice that allows them to operate the way people tend to want them to operate (read: smaller side torsos). Mechs like the Cat and dragon may take a beating to the CT, but think how much faster they'd go down if their STs were more easily targeted, or just took more random damage. Standard engines? Good luck with that.

I think the issue really lies in two areas for most of the mechs. One is that everyone wants their mech to be Centurion-ish. It's not that most of the mechs that have been complained about have overly large CTs, but that the Cent has an overly small CT and a ridiculous ability to protect it.

The other is that it's natural to aim center of mass, and so most damage will go CT on anything which doesn't have a Centurion-ishly small CT, unless the mech is both large enough to have other areas easily targeted and gives people a reason to do so. The Hunchie, for instance will rather often lose the hunch before the CT, because it can be targeted, goes down faster than the CT, and can quickly reduce the effectiveness of the mech. Likewise the Atlas doesn't usually lose STs before CT because the CT is hard to hit, or even do to protecting the CT. It's because the STs are pretty easy to hit, taking one out will drastically reduce effectiveness, and the CT has a LOT of freakin armor! It's just more reasonable to try to reduce it's firepower before trying to pound through all that armor/structure to kill it, most of the time. Likewise for the Stalker. The STs are easy to hit, but so is the CT. The only rason people tend to focus on the STs is it carries so much forepower it makes sense to try to quickly reduce it, and they have minimal arms blocking from the side, which is a much safer place to be attacking from.

Honestly, most mechs that have relatively large STs still get cored more often than losing a side. Most people think the Cataphract has overly large STs, but I run XL because unless someone happened to randomly get a heavy hit on a side, removing most or all of the armor and making it a more tempting target, most players will still primarily hit the CT, because aiming center of mass reduces the chance of missing.

It's an argument much like so many people freaking out about the size of every single mech released. If they're all too large, doesn't that mean they're really all about right? It's a misconception brought on more because some of the mechs are actually stupidly small and everyone wants to compare to those instead of the greater number of reasonably-sized mechs.

[WVAnonymous]

Monky, on 12 September 2013 - 07:29 AM, said:

A good case in point for that is the Atlas or Stalker vs the Highlander or Victor. Usually, an Atlas or Stalker loses a side torso before going down to CT death so long as the player isn't standing still. This is because the side torso hit boxes are comparable to the CT hit boxes and encourages standard engine use. Highlanders and Victors in comparison have fairly large CT hit boxes, and in game you're likely to die to CT coring without losing a side torso which encourages XL use.

Real life has kept my post-Orion playtime down. Any opinion on Orion CT? My smurfy tinkering looks like an XL is a must have.

[Khobai]

Quote

What? If an XL had no drawbacks then why not always use an XL engine?

The drawback is if your side torso is destroyed your mech is destroyed. What im saying is that some mechs side torsos should not be a lot easier to destroy than others... it makes using XL arbitrary.

[Alex Warden]

some mechs could use some rework... when i see the thunderbolt...well... ya know

[Victor Morson]

It should vary 'mech to 'mech, with some having easier to hit CTs versus side torsos and such. That's fine.

However there are extreme cases of both that are terrible. The Awesome with it's billboard like CT, or he Jagger with it's massive side torsos - which are doubly bad on a 'mech that needs to run XL to be effective in most configurations.

[Pale Jackal]

Khobai, on 13 September 2013 - 02:06 AM, said:

The drawback is if your side torso is destroyed your mech is destroyed. What im saying is that some mechs side torsos should not be a lot easier to destroy than others... it makes using XL arbitrary.

I kind of agree, yet I think that differentiating chassis is good for the game. However, I think the gap between piloting a Jaeger and say, a Catapult, is currently way too large. A standard engine in a Catapult is just dumb. I'm perfectly OK with a Standard engine being better in a Jaeger than a Catapult, but I'd like the gap to be lessened.

Victor Morson, on 13 September 2013 - 04:04 AM, said:

It should vary 'mech to 'mech, with some having easier to hit CTs versus side torsos and such. That's fine.

However there are extreme cases of both that are terrible. The Awesome with it's billboard like CT, or he Jagger with it's massive side torsos - which are doubly bad on a 'mech that needs to run XL to be effective in most configurations.

A 'mech that can run 2 UAC5s + additional weapons with a standard engine and big side torsos? Sure, it's no 2 AC20 Jaeger, but I think standard engines in Jaegers are viable. You sacrifice for it, but you do definitely get an increase in survivability.

Edited by Pale Jackal, 13 September 2013 - 05:24 AM.

[Victor Morson]

My primary point is that (even with a standard engine) the Jaggermech has an awful hitbox, despite a small CT; huge side torsos can make a huge difference.

The reason the Centurion is so good despite it's huge torsos is that most configs can run standard, and those arms are like sponges for everything fired at it, so they can tank some damage. Notably this is why arm-gun Centurions are awful, too. Your firepower might as well have a bulls eye drawn on it.

[HammerSwarm]

Pale Jackal, on 13 September 2013 - 05:22 AM, said:

A 'mech that can run 2 UAC5s + additional weapons with a standard engine and big side torsos? Sure, it's no 2 AC20 Jaeger, but I think standard engines in Jaegers are viable. You sacrifice for it, but you do definitely get an increase in survivability.

This gets at the heart of my point. You would see fewer A/C 20 Jagers or similar builds if the hitboxes of said mechs reflected the proper danger of running an XL engine.

The over emphasized center torso has led to a statistically significant number of deaths by coring with intact side torsos. I don't have any hard numbers but I do have the general impression from talking to others about this. Because people know they are at least as likely to be cored before they lose a side torso as after there is no practical penalty for running an XL engine. This in turn has lead to an arms race of sorts by freeing up tonnage for additional weapons leading to weapons combinations that would otherwise be impractical.

This has decreased time to death in 2 ways:

• Being cored is too easy, most mechs seem to soak up core damage leading to early deaths.
  
• XL engines allow for more weapons to be carried and thus exaserbate problem 1.

That is why this is important, the forums are abuzz with solutions ranging from increased internals to quad strength armor to increase time to death. Some calling for increased recharges, some are calling for half strength weapons damage. Even on this thread people seem to want some RNG cone of fire.

My proposition is that you make the bulls eye a little bit smaller so that the rest of the dart board can be hit more often.

[Syllogy]

PEEFsmash, on 12 September 2013 - 12:40 PM, said:

If you want dicerolls go to Vegas. Bad players should not stand a chance against players who are better than them. They should stand a chance against players of their own skill level. A perfect game would have the more skilled player winning 100% of the time. That isn't always possible due to incomplete information, and randomness of scouting direction, etc. However, in full-information games, any randomness should be eliminated from gameplay mechanics so that skill will triumph in as many cases as possible, and nothing to lower the frequency of those cases should be tolerated.

Dumbing down the game and making bads sometimes win important fights due to diceroll mechanics is what you want?! Really?

What do you think Critical Hits are, haus?

[HammerSwarm]

To further explain my point the following is a mock up I did in MS Paint of a generic humanoid structure. It's not meant to be an example of any one mech and their hit boxes but rather an illustration of what a difference changing the hit boxes can make.

[HammerSwarm]

Syllogy, on 13 September 2013 - 08:21 AM, said:

What do you think Critical Hits are, haus?

Critical hits are the imperfect implementation of a system that is too technologically advanced for video games. If you use your imagination to pretend that this 10+ meter behemoth is standing there, with this giant engine, and guns, and heat sinks, electronics, and ammunition all configured inside of it. Now imagine how much more code/computing power it would take to render those parts and calculate what impact my A/C round has on it.

The short hand for that is in fact a RNG, but that is not the ideal system. We do have the technology to make a computer game with aiming capabilities and to have arms legs, heads, and torsos all rendered out and to calculate what my A/c round will do there.

Perhaps in the future we'll be able to eliminate the RNG generator on critical hits and perfectly model a mech and it's systems for 100% simulation, but we're not there yet. We should be moving forwards to better aiming and more simulation not backwards to the ease of dice rolls because the concept of aiming is too difficult and arbitrary for a board game.

[Pale Jackal]

HammerSwarm, on 13 September 2013 - 08:21 AM, said:

This gets at the heart of my point. You would see fewer A/C 20 Jagers or similar builds if the hitboxes of said mechs reflected the proper danger of running an XL engine.

A good point.

[Khobai]

Quote

What do you think Critical Hits are, haus?

Critical hits are pointless. You have a 42% chance to get a critical hit, and you have to do 10 damage to destroy an item. So statistically, by the time you destroy an item, youve already done 25+ damage to the internal structure of the component that item was located in... in other worse the entire location is nearly destroyed, and one or two more hits will probably finish it off.

That is one one the major reasons why internal structure needs to be increased, so critical hits are actually meaningful.

[Joseph Mallan]

Ah the good old days when everything had 1HP. Although TT Does have rules for equipment with multiple crits and the affects damage has.

Old joke my players have is that FASA had a table for everything including one that told us what our characters ate for breakfast!

As to the original question, I disagree with the OP. CT was hit more often than not and in real life the middle of a torso gets the majority of hits.

Unless you aim like me. When I went to a pistol range with a friend of mine, I put the majority of rounds in the head of the target.

Friend: You won't be getting a lot of points for that.

Me: Yeah... I know. But he ain't getting back up!

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 13 September 2013 - 10:11 AM.