176 replies to this topic

[Bishop Steiner]

is it too large?

Yeah. it is.


Doe sit have a hunch, which stays even if you un-equip the AC.

Guilty as charged.

Do I have a 5/1 KDr in my SHS-2D2?

Yup.

So what gives? At the end of the day, I think most people having issues are the same who never figured out the Quickdraw (maybe not all, but most). It is NOT a toe to toe fighter, though it can fight it's own weigh quite well. It's not a fabulous support mech, though it can do so with the right build. It is a mobile, generalist mech, that like the Quickdraw, works best in the Cavalry role, sweeping in on engaged enemies, disengaging, using cover and doing it again.

Not every mech will fit every player or every playstyle. I see too many SHADs, and see too many people like myself, having a blast driving them, to feel the Mech itself is at any horrible disadvantage. And it will only get better with unlocked pilot skills.

That said, I WOULD like to see it a lil shorter (like 2 meters or so). But I gotta say, the number of times I could poke my ac and head over a ridge or building, and lay some UAC suppression love down range and pretty much not get hit back, is kinda handy, too.

[Finn McShae]

Does anyone remember in one of the old books, first or second edition maybe, a little blurb that said that all mechs were supposed to be more or less 14 meters tall, with small amounts of variance. I can't recall if it was a Mechwarrior RPG book or the Battletech main rulebook.

Somewhere after they changed that, but I remember reading it once in the way long ago.

[Agent 0 Fortune]

I sat down and did some calculation last night, and dispalcement wise the mechs are probably pretty close, assuming equal density of all mechs [EDIT and assuming my calculations were reasonable, I had to do comparative height x width x depth to get volume]. Which translates to short fat mechs and tall skinny mechs, each with its own characteristics.
For instance the legendary Zombie Centurion has a lot of volume in its arms, and less in its torso, which give it tremendous survivability. While the Awesome is short and fat with skinny arms.

The Shadowhawk is tall and skinny, making it a narrower target (like a stalker), and offering it a commanding view of the battle field in addition to high mounted weapons. Personally I try to use the height to my advantage, loading up multiple autocannons and standing behind shorter mechs that I can fire over (or LURM over).

Admittedly when I first saw the images I was "WTF", but having played one for 25 matches, I think they work well, and have proved very survivable even with XL engines (a big fear I had with those elongated torsos). Although hopefully one of the Sabre mechs will be short and round (wolverine) to offer another 55 ton perspective.

Edited by Agent 0 Fortune, 16 October 2013 - 09:50 AM.

[Voivode]

It took me a while to get used to the Shadowhawk but after about ten matches I'd figured it out. All the mechs that straddle the line between two weight classes are a bit funny and take some getting used to.

[Otto Cannon]

Inypt, on 16 October 2013 - 09:39 AM, said:

If the argument is just from a game play perspective, and modeling/physics be damned then fine. But don't use the difference in tonnage as an excuse/reason because it's highly flawed.

Personally I think some mediums are too big from a gameplay perspective; however you look at it the Shawk is almost as easy to shoot as the Atlas. However, if PGI simply showed that the volume calculations they used forced them to make the mechs the sizes they are, then fair enough- at least people could drop the subject and accept that some mechs are just naturally gimped by their shape and you have the choice not to use them. The problem is that the various mechs don't appear to be consistent with each other volume-wise or in profile and PGI so far refuse to address or discuss the subject, leaving people to assume that they have something to hide because they did indeed make mistakes.

[Felicitatem Parco]

How dare people come into this thread with maths and sciences!

There's no reason for us to be considering the fact that volume is proportional to the linear dimensions cubed... Yes, a 55 ton mech *should* be about 80% as thick, wide, and tall as a 100 ton mech, as opposed to half as tall, wide, and thick as many people have been suggesting... But this is an arcade shooter, right? It's not a sim... If this were a sim, then the shadow hawk would be about 80% x 80% x 80% the overall dimensions of an Atlas, as we currently see in-game. But, clearly, as an arcade shooter (as so many have contested), we should be expecting something that's 50% x 50% x 50%, right?

Right. As an arcade shooter with no sim aspects, I demand that the relative difference in weight between Mechs be applied to all 3 dimensions so that the difference in volume is equal to the difference in weight cubed.

End rant.

[Tundara]

I'm still firmly in the camp that the SHD's height is an advantage, not a draw-back. Just had a match in Canyon Network where I was in a 'trench' fighting a quad AC/5 Cataphract. His rounds were hitting the lip of the ground more than me while I had no trouble landing hit after hit on him.

The SHD is a great mech, if you know how to pilot it. Someone mentioned them being 'Cavalry', and that is very fitting. They aren't Brawlers. You could make some decent Sniper set-ups. But I feel their true strength lay in finding high terrain, and just swooping down on the enemy. They have good up/down movement on their torso mounted weapons. Get a high perch where your weapons can track down on the enemy, but they can't elevate theirs to hit you.

Be the Hawk and swoop! Swooping is bad (for the enemy).

[Ransack]

Volume shmolume, it looks out of place and is easier to hit from distance than a mech 15 tons heavier. There is absolutely no reason that they could not have made it shorter and slightly wider to make up for this mythical "volume"

Another Shark jumped by PGI. Now I buy nothing at all based on anything that they say OR concept art. I will forever be behind the curve in this game only getting things after release (if at all).

[Inypt]

Otto Cannon, on 16 October 2013 - 10:00 AM, said:

The problem is that the various mechs don't appear to be consistent with each other volume-wise or in profile and PGI so far refuse to address or discuss the subject, leaving people to assume that they have something to hide because they did indeed make mistakes.

I do agree that this should probably me made clearer by the development team. Because people do always assume the worst when silence is there answer. I also agree that there is inconstancy. Although in the completed opposite of what more people think, which is the more recent Mechs (Quickdraw, Shadow Hawk, etc.) being to small. And in more reality that the Small Mechs are too small and need to be increased (all lights, Hunchback, etc).

I understand the real thing that people are complaining about is that they don't see a advantage in taking a medium Mech over a heavy or assault. And for some reason the height has become the main factor that has been locked upon. In my opinion the problem lays in the most people don't seem to get enough mileage in the increased firepower and armor over the loss in speed from the transition from light to medium. While the transition from medium to heavy or assault seem to have large increases in firepower/armor with only small decreases in mobility (for many a good trade since mobility is the hardest attribute to make good use of).

I really don't feel that if a medium Mech was shrunk down it would be all that much more difficult to hit. A Raven going 70 Km/hr is still easy to hit. So what I think people really want in a speed increase in mediums. I think what happens is that mediums have a lot more hard points than light, and there isn't really the big of an increase from mediums to heavies and assaults. What people have to do is stop up-gunning there mediums to compete with heavies along with loading them with armor and instead start placing bigger engines in them. A tall Mech going 110+ is going to be a tricky target to bring down, especially with jump jets. If most of the time they can't see you coming, you step out kit them and run away... then the extra firepower over a light will pay off.

[Bishop Steiner]

Finn McShae, on 16 October 2013 - 09:42 AM, said:

Does anyone remember in one of the old books, first or second edition maybe, a little blurb that said that all mechs were supposed to be more or less 14 meters tall, with small amounts of variance. I can't recall if it was a Mechwarrior RPG book or the Battletech main rulebook.

Somewhere after they changed that, but I remember reading it once in the way long ago.

actually it was 10 meters as an average, 14 was for the really tall ones like the Banshee, which, btw, was taller than an Atlas, because the atlas was very stocky

Ransack, on 16 October 2013 - 10:26 AM, said:

Volume shmolume, it looks out of place and is easier to hit from distance than a mech 15 tons heavier. There is absolutely no reason that they could not have made it shorter and slightly wider to make up for this mythical "volume"

Another Shark jumped by PGI. Now I buy nothing at all based on anything that they say OR concept art. I will forever be behind the curve in this game only getting things after release (if at all).

lolz!

Don´t let rational arguments get in the way of a good irrational QQ there!

[Silence Jin Mang]

Inypt, on 16 October 2013 - 09:39 AM, said:

Wait so let me get this right, if the concept art (and remember it's concept art, AKA not final) shows something you feel is better then final product it's a travesty and the designers don't know what there doing. But if another something else that is you deem "better" then the concept art, it's no problem and ignore it.

Bring attention to all problems with scaling seems to be very one directional. Which I know everyone wants to complain about mediums, but the most out of scale mechs at the moment are actually the light, which are to small. But no one wants to complain about them since they benefit from this problem.

I believe the forgotten aspect of scaling is that tonnage refers to weight, not height. What we should be looking at is the volume difference of the Mechs since height is a very bad indicator. The picture placed of the Atlas and Shadow Hawk next to each other is actually a strong indicator that the Shadow hawk actually has a very well made model. Assuming there is not large empty pockets in most mechs which only the light Mechs chose to get ride of. Look at it this way, were looking at a 55 ton Mech and a 100 ton Mech. So a 45% difference. You can see the volume of the chest, legs, and arms of hte Shadow Hawk are all significantly smaller (more than half) the volume of the Atlas.

I'll give a super simple example:
A Square 10'x10'x10' has a volume of 1000.

If you were to half the square, like everyone seems to want to do for a 50 ton Mech vs a 100 ton Mech you would get :
5'x5'x5' for a volume of 125 (a 88% decrease from the original).

So if you wanted only a 45%reduction as would be appropriate, is would only shrink the sides of the square to roughly 8.2'
Since 8.2'x8.2'x8.2' = ~550

So only a 18% decrease in every demention is needed. And as can be easily seen in the picture the width and length of the limbs and torso were more than 18% cut back. So the Height would have to remain relatively unchanged.

Conclusion : The Shadow Hawk is actually to small for only a 45% decrease.

I'm sorry for bringing math into a flame thread... but this band wagon is something people have to get off of. If the argument is just from a game play perspective, and modeling/physics be damned then fine. But don't use the difference in tonnage as an excuse/reason because it's highly flawed.

These are good number sir, ty for them, they have helped my research a lot . Anyways, on to the reasoning why these numbers aren't entirely true. None of these mechs are up to canon scales, we all know this and have come to accept this, BUT the problem comes in when you do the ratio numbers for tons. Going by a estimated scale compared to the buildings in River City (which I assume to be architecturally done in meters for each floor) an atlas is about 18 meters tall. Its a tall mech, its a 100 ton mech, and it was quote,

"A 'Mech as powerful as possible, as impenetrable as possible, and as ugly and foreboding as conceivable, so that fear itself will be our ally".

Now I assume that PGI went for about that, the atlas is a fearsome sight, I still run from them in my mediums and lights. But anyways, the mech is a behemoth and dwarfs most mechs due to its loadout and design. Now take a Battlemaster, which was designed to be the star leagues biggest and baddest mech. IT was so huge that it literally could only be produced in limited numbers, it even says so in the lore. But side by side, the Battlemaster and atlas are like husband and wife (no sexism meant). The Atlas being taller and the Battlemaster being shorter. This is appropriate scaling, nothing wrong here, but then add in the shadow hawk. It stands as tall as the Battlemaster, and I`m pretty sure that if the Battlemaster was developed a whopping 200 years after the shadow hawk, that if it was suspose to be the BIGGEST mech in the star league army, that it should be that. But it is not, and if that isn't enough for you, if we want to go by weight and height ratio, the Battlemaster doesn't make up for its only 15% decrease in weight.

But I`ll go into deeper explanation of height to explain this logic. So if by your ratio`s an atlas that is 100 tons about 8 meters wide and 18 tall, is the ratio we use as a standard, because it seems the most canonical to size. Then take a shadow hawk, which is about 16 meters tall and 6 meters wide and weighs 55 tons, the math doesn't add up for a 45% loss of weight. And that's apparent without me doing the math, but I will just to prove a point. If the final dimension on a atlas is about 5 meters thick, they the atlas has 648 meters cubed of space to fill in the mech. Now take the Shadow hawk with a cube size of 480 (5 meters think as well) and alone in the cube ratio`s the mech should theoretically weigh 74 tons (rounding down from 74.074). I realize this is all assuming that the buildings are meter sound and were built by a human and not an alien, but even if we use comparative ratios as in 1.8 stories of that building is about the size of an atlas, the numbers come out the same as the shadow hawk covers about 1.6 stories. But still the mech should due to its size and atlas comparison weigh 74 tons.

And don't say its that tall and only weighs 55 tons and that the weight is just more spread out. Its a 2550 era mech, almost 300 hundred years before the atlas, so if it`s that big at that time, and it was already hard to manage the insane sizes of 85 tonners at around the same height as 16 meters, then how the hell does a 55 ton mech do it? I mean logically speaking, if a 85 ton stalker had major stress problems from being so tall and so heavy, they how does the shadow hawk not have those ever mention in canon if it really is that tall? Its 5.5 tons with only the structure of the mech. The stalker with 8.5. The shadow hawk is taller by about a meter, but my question is how a mech that has only 64% of the structure of a stalker not suffer from stress if the stalker does and its shorter? Nothing makes logical sense by the the shadow hawk being so large. But if you decrease it`s size to say around 14.5 x 6 x 4 you get a more reasonable 348 which is about 54 tons compared to the atlas in size to weight ratio. And its only a slightly decreased size, with only the height and thickness reduced, not its wideness. My point is settled.

Also by your math all these mechs are sized by a square ratio which makes no sense as I don't think any mech would fit in a square and fit the dimensions of them perfectly. No mech is 12 meters tall by 12 meters thick, by 12 meters wide.

All math done by logical assumption that logical humans built these buildings, and that the height of these stories are generally accurate.

[Finn McShae]

Bishop Steiner, on 16 October 2013 - 10:50 AM, said:

actually it was 10 meters as an average, 14 was for the really tall ones like the Banshee, which, btw, was taller than an Atlas, because the atlas was very stocky

There we go. Its been years and I was having problems remembering what they had said. I do remember that I thought that was odd that mechs like the locust were somehow supposed to be nearly as tall as the Atlas, but hey, it was a tabletop wargame with painted minatures, not like it mattered.

I wonder when they moved away from that since the last TRO I looked at had a handy little chart in the back with average scaling. Speaking of, maybe PGI should look that one up.

[Frantic Pryde]

I don't give a flying fig newton how taller short it is...

Fix the hit boxes!

This thing is all CT. Played the hell out of it, yesterday (all basic efficiencies complete on all 3)

A good 99% of death was CT core (ran an XL). I was legged a few times because I jump a lot, but I think my side torso was taken out twice. LRMs and SRMs are especially bad with this and double especially in the rear armor.

And before you go there, I Always twist. In fact, I took my gauss off after two matches when I realized this mech needs to fire and immediately twist in order to survive and I was still taking mostly CT damage.

I normally pilot a BJ and that thing is a tank compared to the SHD...

I'm really glad I didn't upgrade to saber right now...almost did to!

[SteinerOnion]

I have yet to die from anything BUT a CT Core. I have no problem with the scale, but perhaps the CT hitbox is rather large when compared to how it looks in the mech bay.

[William T Riker]

I know some of you guys are mechwarrior physicists but in the real world this is how it looks:

[Shadey99]

Finn McShae, on 16 October 2013 - 09:42 AM, said:

Does anyone remember in one of the old books, first or second edition maybe, a little blurb that said that all mechs were supposed to be more or less 14 meters tall, with small amounts of variance. I can't recall if it was a Mechwarrior RPG book or the Battletech main rulebook.

Somewhere after they changed that, but I remember reading it once in the way long ago.

While early size charts were like this:

Later size charts are like this:

Most people prefer the second...

Oh and I meant to post this earlier, but it's not easy to search for stuff on my tablet at work...

[Bishop Steiner]

Shadey99, on 16 October 2013 - 01:20 PM, said:

While early size charts were like this:

Later size charts are like this:

Most people prefer the second...

Oh and I meant to post this earlier, but it's not easy to search for stuff on my tablet at work...

despite the first making so much more sense. What is odd, is the Hellbringer is usually referred to as more compact in fluff, with the Summoner noted for it's height, and you would think (and it would make more sense) fir their heights to be reversed. Wonder if intentional, or typical FASA bad editing?

Edited by Bishop Steiner, 16 October 2013 - 01:24 PM.

[Karyudo ds]

Bishop Steiner, on 16 October 2013 - 01:23 PM, said:

despite the first making so much more sense.

It sort of does. In the game the mech's weight had nothing to do with how hard the mech was to hit. An ankle-bitting Spider didn't slip under your view, you just rolled and blasted it. Then there's the fact that every mech wasn't necessarily built with the exact same materials. Half the Daishi is just payload.

Unfortunately as sort of pointed out earlier this isn't Battletech. It's Mechwarrior, an arcade game. It's designed for a competitive experience and when the guy next to you is about the same size but twice as durable, carrying more weapons, and just as hard to hit it becomes difficult to understand why. Whereas by Battletech logic with the game being based around scenarios, campaigns, and sans-mechlab (technically). If your stuck being half as durable because of logistics it made more sense but seeing as that's never really been a Mechwarrior thing 20 ton mechs need to be 100 ton mech's footballs for this to make any immediate sense.

I guess.

[ShadowbaneX]

William T Riker, on 16 October 2013 - 06:31 AM, said:

Lol there will never be a rescaling pass. In fact get ready for some more supersized 55 tonners!

yeah, that's not an answer. Someone should reply back and ask if the Bushwhacker will also be "55 ton size".

[IceLom]

The mech is outstanding...

Finally height is the least important dimension not the only one. People who only see height as the size of a much are just plain stupid.