54 replies to this topic

[3rdworld]

I was thinking about extra armor, mountable in the internal space of the mech.

We know armor can take up internal space (ferro-fibrous) and using crit based, would allow people to help offset mechs with disadvantages. Catapult head, Raven Legs, HBKs hunch and so forth. It would also prevent a nigh unkillable mech as the CT is limited to 2 crits.

[Artgathan]

If given the option to apply the above to specific mechs I would select the 40 armor on the arms for a few (Centurions specifically, maybe Victors as well) but the 20 CT armor for everything else.

In general this game needs a slower TTK. There's none of the Battletech "war of attrition" here. In TT the fight becomes increasingly desperate as pilots try to score hits with whatever weapons they have left. There's a sense of desperation that really fits with the whole theme of battletech (which is doing the best you can with what you've got left). Pilots wailed on one another, until one limping one-armed combatant remained.

In MW:O you blast out the target's CT leaving the rest of the mech relatively unscathed.

[stjobe]

Artgathan, on 30 September 2013 - 07:24 AM, said:

In general this game needs a slower TTK. There's none of the Battletech "war of attrition" here. In TT the fight becomes increasingly desperate as pilots try to score hits with whatever weapons they have left. There's a sense of desperation that really fits with the whole theme of battletech (which is doing the best you can with what you've got left). Pilots wailed on one another, until one limping one-armed combatant remained.

In MW:O you blast out the target's CT leaving the rest of the mech relatively unscathed.

Quoted for truth.

[Almond Brown]

So 80 total versus 20 total? Hmmm. How about 40 each for the arms and 20 front and 20 Back CT? lol

Damage transfer might work as well. All damage to CT gets spread to both LT and RT, percentages are debatable. CT hit goes 15% LT and RT leaving 70% on CT keeping dead section transfer in tact?

Edited by Almond Brown, 30 September 2013 - 09:45 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Almond Brown, on 30 September 2013 - 09:44 AM, said:

So 80 total versus 20 total? Hmmm. How about 40 each for the arms and 20 front and 20 Back CT? lol

The magical mech fairy doesn't negotiate.

[Hisashi No Oni]

Did not vote on this. Come up with a real poll that means somthing. My thought dont get them started on buff/nerf rollercoster rides over armor when they still need to fix things that are broken.

[William Mountbank]

I notice that a lot of people are keen on increasing the internal structure hit points. If that's the case, can we also have a readout of structural health on the HUD, because already when I see an Atlas with no armour, I wonder if it's worth trying to put the extra 70 damage onto him...

[MustrumRidcully]

William Mountbank, on 30 September 2013 - 12:58 PM, said:

I notice that a lot of people are keen on increasing the internal structure hit points. If that's the case, can we also have a readout of structural health on the HUD, because already when I see an Atlas with no armour, I wonder if it's worth trying to put the extra 70 damage onto him...

You mean a numerical description? Because the color of the internal armor also changes with damage state, so that is already there. But of course you can never tell whether it's a yellow 60 internal or a yellow 20 internals...

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 01 October 2013 - 05:39 AM.

[Zyllos]

Artgathan, on 30 September 2013 - 07:24 AM, said:

If given the option to apply the above to specific mechs I would select the 40 armor on the arms for a few (Centurions specifically, maybe Victors as well) but the 20 CT armor for everything else.

In general this game needs a slower TTK. There's none of the Battletech "war of attrition" here. In TT the fight becomes increasingly desperate as pilots try to score hits with whatever weapons they have left. There's a sense of desperation that really fits with the whole theme of battletech (which is doing the best you can with what you've got left). Pilots wailed on one another, until one limping one-armed combatant remained.

In MW:O you blast out the target's CT leaving the rest of the mech relatively unscathed.

And you wonder why this is happening with our current aiming mechanics? Oh, your crosshair is on the CT? All weapons fired will hit the CT.

The problem is that the community doesn't feel that "just hitting the mech" is good enough.

Edited by Zyllos, 01 October 2013 - 11:59 AM.

[SkyCake]

G SE7EN7, on 29 September 2013 - 02:54 AM, said:

Armour is fine, its a trade off.... how it should be! One thing the devs got right.

how is it fine when the CT is the only thing that matters, you have mechs rolling around with no armour on whole appendages and doing fine... what tradeoffs are you speaking of.... there is only one way to play armour, max CT

[MustrumRidcully]

SkyCake, on 01 October 2013 - 12:03 PM, said:

how is it fine when the CT is the only thing that matters, you have mechs rolling around with no armour on whole appendages and doing fine... what tradeoffs are you speaking of.... there is only one way to play armour, max CT

No armour is probably an exaggeration, but I think when you want to get a bit more tonnage by stripping armor:
- If you're not a light, start with the legs. THey have a lot of armor, and a lot of internal structure. People can cripple your movement, but not your firepower, and to kill you by legging still requires a lot of armor.
- Then consider stripping from the arms. Especially if your main guns are in the torso anyway (a favored approach of the good old Gauss Catapults. Though they overall probably have gotten rarer since the Jagermech has other advantages, and energy weapons have come more viable since the K2s best days)

[Aym]

I would love to see the changes to game mechanics if the TT values weren't just doubled across the board, but rather something like 1.5x for Arms, 2x for Side Torso and Legs, 2.5 for CT with Internal health adjusted accordings, or even buffed across the board, to represent the sheer resilience of the mechs. I'd love to see it be an actual consideration to shoot at arms, or live on with systems disabled but the section those systems were housed in remains sort of intact... Oh well. Additionally I'd like to see the CT for mech-crotches be split between left and right legs.

MustrumRidcully, on 29 September 2013 - 08:59 AM, said:

...Relying on internal structure would allow simply slapping on extra armor to individual hit locations without having to worry about how to translate stock mechs. Just determine how much extra structure by weight class, figure out how you want to distribute it, and apply. So if you go for 2 extra point to CT per 5 tons and 1 extra point per side torso and leg per 5 tons, you would have something you could everywhere without needing to come up with a new armor points per ton or new max armor values.

An alternative to start could be:

• 50 % of extra armor points.
  
• Max armor points per mech: +50 %
  
• Max armor points per hit location: +100 %.

That means that you cannot possibly fully armour all locations, but gives us some freedom on how to distribute armour. Now, people will first start maxing out CT armour. Everyone sees that the CT is now the hardest part of a mech to crush, and it becomes more effective disarming or legging mechs. WIth less shots going for the CT now, people will start to experiment, lower the CT armour to buff side armos, legs or even arms, and see what will give them the best result.


Maybe there will eventually be found the perfect balance point, maybe it will be in constant shift. If the devs figure out that there is a trend, they can start changing the max armour points per hit locations to values that are closer to the trend (that would help avoiding noobs running "armor trap builds" - e.g. overarmouring their CT or overarmouring their arms or something like that.

Both of these are great ideas, I'd like to see them tried as well! Bummer we missed the chance to test these during beta!

[Aym]

MadPanda, on 30 September 2013 - 02:31 AM, said:

That's a silly idea that would just make legs as the most coveted target instead of the CT. Atlas has about 90-100 CT armor and legs are at around 80. So two legs would be at 160 armor and ct even up to 200. Not to mention almost every single person out there is shaving leg armor off to make their builds. So moving the focus problem from CT to legs don't really solve anything.

Oh but Mad, if the CT had more armor, and legs were being targetted, then that brings in the cost/benefit of adding armor to the legs. At least that's something more than we have now, where we shave down the legs and arms because we know they only get hit by bad shots.

[MustrumRidcully]

I think the end goal is to have a set of armor maximums on each location that even in the best armored case, it's a tough choice whether you go for the CT or systematically taking out components to disarm the mech or systematically cripple the mechs movement ability. If we want the hit locations to really matter on a tactical level, the choice can never be trivial.

[Tombstoner]

MWO is to TT as the world war z movie is to the book.

I would love to have a well designed game that took into account all the elements a port from TT to a live action FPS would require to translate the TT design space on a 1-1 basis, but PGI took lots of short cuts that have very serous consequences for balance.

The primary design element at play here is the desire for a light mech to be capable of killing an assault with a 50-50 outcome. for that to happen lights needed a major buff and assaults a nerf. This occurred during the cut and paste phase during friends and family testing and early closed beta. the interaction effects between mech size, speed and skill based vs. 2d6 hit location was omitted/overlooked/ opted out.... i presume because lights could kill assaults very well. This was regarded as a success before double armor. but TTK was too short and a simple doubling of armor was over layed. this had to happen in a very simple form because of the desire to buff lights and nerf assaults.

thus we have what PGI is happy with. but more armor distorts the time to kill relationship between light and assault.: lights get stronger faster then assaults.

To increase TTK over all with the current design paradigm is way to complicated. it would result in one class of mech being favored over the others and players would quickly figure that out.

As things stand the only viable trade off for armor is taking from the legs and back. lowering over all values is just flat out insane / not very viable IMO. you need max values on front torsos just to live for 60 seconds. bad design in my book.

Kinda like taking the best parts of TT or the WWZ book and tossing it out the window in favor of some secondary desires like a movie trilogy or competing with COD, BF or CS.